


Of Green Tea and Blue Ink

by TheChoas



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Fluff, Fluff and Smut, M/M, Smut, Yaoi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-18
Updated: 2019-05-20
Packaged: 2019-05-24 22:32:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 34,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14963444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheChoas/pseuds/TheChoas
Summary: Minseok was used to standing on the sidelines and swallowing his feelings.When he was 20, Jongdae proposed to his girlfriend. It had been the perfect opportunity if you would ask him why he had done it so early in both of their lifes - the girl was beautiful, lovely and they had been a couple for about four years already, they had finished school together with (relatively) good grades and were accepted into the college they had wanted to go to. Life was great and calling her 'wife' instead of only 'girlfriend' would make it even better, so he bought a ring with all money he had left and asked her to marry him when they were on a late-night-walk.And Minseok stood by his side the whole time with a lump in his throat and hidden tears in his eyes because he knew that he was the one Jongdae should spend his forever with.





	1. Prologue

It was the 22nd of November when Minseok was told that he should perform as the leading role in a play his music teacher had written. He had been a chubby boy back then, who lived his life without drawing any attention towards himself, making sure that he was always in the shadows so that nobody really saw him. But somehow Mr. Park was convinced that he had some kind of undiscovered potential and that was why he came up to the lonely senior about a month before Christmas. 

“Hello Minseok,” he greeted, sat down beside him in the back of the classroom and placed his leather bag beside his chair. The boy smiled shyly and looked up at the white haired man beside him through his thick-framed glasses. “Good morning, sir. How may I help you?”  
“Am I right when I say that you read the announcement I had pinned to the blackboard?”  
Minseok thought about it for a split moment before he nodded in response. A big, glass box on one wall which contained all news and requests of teachers and students alike, hung in the main hallway. If you had lost something or if a teacher was sick and not able to make it to the lessons so that a supply would cover for them, it would be written as a note and pinned on the board, somebody (if not everyone) would notice it at some point.   
“Yes, you are, if you are talking about the play you want to perform in… spring was it?”  
“That’s right,” Mr. Park confirmed and smiled brightly. “But to my great disappointment, I haven’t seen you at the audition for it.”

Looking down on the desk surface, a blush made its way into the boy’s cheeks. “The spotlight is not my favorite place on this Earth,” he said slowly, fidgeting a bit in his seat as he played with his fingers to take his focus elsewhere than on the man next to him. He knew that Mr. Park thought that he could sing pretty well and even tried to get him into acting more than once but he had never been keen on getting attention at all. That’s why he always made sure to wear clothes that didn’t seem to fit him right to hide his chubby body, why he wore glasses all the time even if he didn’t necessarily need them, that was why he didn’t speak until he had to. But things worked for him and that was all that mattered even if that meant that he was a little lonely sometimes.   
“This doesn’t change the fact that you are one of the best singers in my class, though,” the man ought to consider and threw Minseok a pointed look. “So please don’t think that I would be alright with you letting an opportunity like this slide.”  
“I’m not sure if I understand what you are trying to tell me, sir,” Minseok muttered, still desperately avoiding his teachers gaze. He had an assumption, of course, but he didn’t really know if he wanted it to become reality. 

“I gave away almost every role I had in stock but one is still open because a certain someone was missing at the theater when I held the audition. I kept the role for the protagonist because, let’s be honest, I don’t think there would be somebody who fits the character better than you can.”  
Minseok laughed quietly to himself and shook his head slowly. “I’m sorry, sir, but I don’t think I can live up to your expectations. I think you should look for another student who is willing to volunteer and work hard to not disappoint you.”  
Mr. Park sighed, opened his bag and took out a pile of white sheets of paper before handing it over to the dark haired boy. On top of the first sheet was written, “To be a good man – by Isaac Park.” in a cursive font that looked all to familiar to Minseok. It was the same style of lettering the teacher had used for his note that was pinned to the blackboard. It was the script to the play. 

“Let me change my overture a bit,” the man began, a smirk playing on his lips now. “You can either act as the protagonist or I will let you flunk in my class this year and please be certain that I know how much you need a good grade in it to graduate with the GPA you want to achieve.”  
Minseok’s jaw fell down at these words slightly. Mr. Park had always been his favorite teacher until now. He was caring, he understood when you had too much other stuff to do to hand in the homework at the due date, he was more like a friend than a teacher but this… this was the most unexpected and utterly stupid idea he had ever came up with.   
“Sir, please, I…” he was looking for the right words to say, for a reasonable excuse, for a plea that didn’t make it past his lips in the right way. Nothing came to his mind, he was clueless. He certainly didn’t want to play, as the protagonist of the play on top of that, let alone be in the acting-club what would unavoidably happen if he chose to coalesce. There were too many people he didn’t know, he had to speak most of the time, he had to sing on stage and act and dance and…   
“Please don’t think that I do this because I don’t like you or because I want to cause you any trouble,” the teacher assured him and laid one hand on his shoulder reassuringly, watching the boy biting down on his bottom lip as he stared down at the papers in his fingers. “I just know that there is so much more behind the façade you put up for the world to see and I think that this is a great way to get you out of your shell. Think about it, okay? We will perform it in late April, so that you don’t have to worry about too much attention since you graduate in summer anyway. If you really and absolutely don’t want to, it’s okay, then I will find somebody but keep in mind that I actually don’t want anybody else to play in that role.” 

Minseok smiled shyly and finally looked up at the teacher, placing the script on his desk and laying a hand on top of it as if he wanted to swear an oaf. “I will tell you by next week if that’s alright.”  
“Absolutely,” he grinned. “You know where to find me. I will leave you in peace now, I guess I have bothered you more than enough for today, haven’t I?”  
“May I be completely honest, sir?”  
“I beg you to be.”  
“Yes, you have bothered me enough.”  
The man laughed and patted his shoulder before he stood up and straightened the wrinkles that had made an appearance in the fabric of his suit. “Okay, well then, have a nice day, I will wait for your answer.”  
“You too, sir.”

The student sat there for the whole break between his classes and stared at the black ink on the paper on top of the pile. He had listened to Mr. Park’s rambling about the play for about two years, he knew the storyline and character development, he knew how much work he had put in these pages and how incredibly happy he was once he had finished to write this monster, he even knew some passages by heart since the teacher didn’t stop to talk when he wrote it (which he did at school most of the times and since Minseok sat in the first row in music class, this didn’t really come as a surprise). Perhaps that was why he knew in this moment that he would do it anyway, whether Mr. Park threatened him or not, Minseok just felt like he had to do this since the boy wasn’t keen on disappointing anyone what unavoidably happen if he decided to reject the leading role. Even his parents would try to get him into acting if he told them, how much more if he was tending to let the opportunity slide. Maybe he should just give it a try and see how everything went, seeing that Mr. Park would be the only teacher to look over the actors, it couldn’t work out to be too bad, could it? 

Looking back now, Minseok wasn’t sure whether he regretted the decision he had made. Hell, he hadn’t even been sure what he would say to the man when he walked through the light yellow-colored hallway before the first class was about to start only to stand in front of the door that had ‘A327 – Music’ written at eye level before he hesitantly raised a hand to knock against the wooden surface. Instantly regretting his choice, not feeling ready to make a decision even if he had thought about it for a week now, pondering the pros and cons of agreeing to play the protagonist, he still wasn’t sure. He still didn’t know what would come out of this and he still didn’t know if he wanted to be in Mr. Park’s class if he rejected the idea. A muffled “Come in,” pulled him back into reality and made him push down the handle as he released a breath he wasn’t even aware of holding. 

The white haired man sat in front of his desk, going through some marking he had to do until Friday, barely looking up to see who had come through the door.   
“Good morning, sir,” he greeted him with a bright smile and closed up behind him, the lock making a clicking noise when it fell shut.   
“Oh Minseok,” he said in a surprised voice and raised his head with his eyes blown wide. “I didn’t expect you to come here so early but I’m glad that you are here. Please, spare me the small talk and just get to your decision. Can I be happy with the way things are or do I have to, heavy heartedly, search for a student who is willing to act?”  
Chuckling quietly to himself, he awkwardly shuffled a bit closer to the desk and shyly nodded. To hell with living in the shadows – he had to step out of them one day anyway.

“I will do it.”  
Clapping to congratulate and grinning in approval, the teacher stood up and held his hand out for Minseok to take and shake. “I promise that you won’t regret it.”  
“We will see about that but alright, I’ll believe you for now.” Catching a glimpse of the time on the clock that adorned his wrist, his eyes widened in shock. “I have to go, history is going to start in about one minute, I’m sorry.”  
“Don’t be!” he waved it off and motioned for the door. “Tell whoever your teacher is now that I held you back and that they can yell at me instead of you if they want or have to.”

When the day of the first rehearsal came, Minseok was sitting in the far back of the theater room and looked down on the script in his hands while slowly more and more people began to fill the open space around him. Nobody dared to sit too close to him yet, most of them weren’t even sure if they had ever seen this boy before, let alone knew his name or why he was there in first place. Only one small but loud guy thought that he maybe could use some company and that was why he, out of all people, walked over to the loner, letting himself fall in the armchair next to him and smiled when the boy looked up at him with a surprised look plastered on his face. 

“Hello new human!” were the first words that unknown guy said to Minseok, confusing him a bit since this was not really a normal way to greet people you had never seen before but then again not many persons had ever made an effort to get to know him, so perhaps this was common and Minseok just didn’t know it.   
“Hello,” he mumbled and waved shortly, hiding his face a bit more behind the bangs that covered his forehead and a small part of his eyes when he hung his head a bit to avoid the look that boy threw him.   
“Please, don’t be shy. A play is not the right place to be shy at all,” the boy tried to coax him out of his comfort zone, leaning down a bit to catch a glimpse of Minseok’s adverted eyes, grinning when he actually met the other’s gaze. “And I don’t bite, I can promise you that.”  
“One can never be careful enough,” he joked and smiled coyly, sitting a bit straighter in order to look at the black haired boy properly. He was younger than himself, Minseok decided, younger and a lot more open than he was if he had the guts to just walk up to a stranger and make an effort to talk to them. He was quite good looking, though. Not too light nor tanned skin, black hair that seemed to not follow his will at all, pretty dark brown eyes, a straight nose and relatively thin but full lips that curled up at the corners together with a lanky, short body. 

“That’s true but I absolutely assure you that I am not thinking about biting you at all, stranger,” he retorted and laughed. Loud and almost obnoxious but it was alright. He probably was a good actor – outgoing, extroverted, confident in himself – Minseok could imagine all of that only because of how the boy threw his head back a bit and let his voice flow freely without even looking like he thought about disturbing anybody with it like Minseok did whenever he just chuckled. Sometimes he wished he could be like this too until he remembered that all was fine with the way things were. It was better if he wasn’t standing in the spotlight. The sidelines were safe, nobody would judge him there. 

The guy was about to say something when the door was forcefully pushed open again so that it slammed against the wall with a loud bang in the same second Mr. Park walked into the room.   
“Hello everybody!” he greeted and quickly walked to the front, his dark grey coat swaying with every step he took. Minseok rolled his eyes at the so typical entrance – the teacher had always had a thing for dramatic appearance.   
“I’m glad that all of you are gather here today even though some of you could already be at home and asleep, I appreciate that very much.” He scanned the small crowd of students and smiled when his eyes fell upon a certain boy.   
“Jongdae, I’m glad you decided to come here, too, I thought you were just at the audition because your girlfriend was there?”  
“Well, that’s true,” the guy next to Minseok said. So he was named Jongdae, good to know. “And it’s also her fault that I am present today. She said that if she didn’t get the role, I should at least take the one you offered me even if I don’t even know why you picked me out of everybody else to play.”

Minseok’s eyes flickered over to the boy for a short moment. It sounded like he was more whipped than anything but the fond look on his face made it clear that he didn’t mind doing this for his girlfriend at all. Minseok was not one to judge others easily but he was proud of his ability to read people most of the times, Jongdae was no exception. He was leaning forward the slightest bit, his underarms resting on his thighs and his fingers entwined loosely – even if he said this was all for the girl, he wanted to do this, he was interested in the play and maybe about as exciting as Minseok was with the way one of his legs kept bobbing up and down quite fast. The first difference he spotted between them was, that Jongdae didn’t seem to mind the attention that was on him in this moment, his voice didn’t waver when he talked loudly so that Mr. Park was able to hear it even though more than ten rows of chairs and 30 students were separating them. 

“Good, but you better stay here from now on because I think you are just the right match to that role,” the teacher smiled and let his eyes skid over to Minseok. “And I see you already found your partner, that’s great, but now why don’t we start with the formal stuff? Until everyone of you knows the script by heart, I don’t think we have to meet up every day…”   
Mr. Park gave the student’s who still hadn’t gotten the manuscript a copy of the script and then went to all the kids and explained their role to them after he had finished with his explanations about the near future. Jongdae rummaged in the bag to his feet until he had found the pile of white sheets and quickly shuffled though the pages. “So you are Minseok then, am I right?”  
He asked as his eyes scanned some passages from the text before he looked up after some time when he didn’t get any answers or reaction out of the boy. “Confused to why I know?”  
Minseok nodded shortly and skidded a bit back in his chair before scolding himself for the action in his mind. It wasn’t like this was unusual, they were at the same school after all. 

“Mr. Park kept on whining about why a certain Minseok didn’t turn up to audition and that he would be so perfect and that we would get along so well and so on. He said that he would give nobody else that role until you had told him that you were a hundred percent sure that you didn’t want to take a part in his play,” he shrugged. “I think everybody here knows who you are since none of the other candidates for the role are here today.”  
A bit speechless and slightly stunned Minseok managed to swallow hard before he spoke up again. “W-well, I… I… yes, I am Minseok.”  
“Okay then,” Jongdae smiled reassuringly and leaned back in his armchair a bit, “we will spend a lot of time together from now on so I think we should start off with getting to know each other, don’t you think? I can start to tell you some things you should know about me if you are not comfortable with me, yet, we can even get out of here if there are too many people around for you liking. I know a small café down the street, how does that sound?”

Scanning the crowed around them and catching more than a few students looking at them, he nodded quickly, suddenly very glad that persons like Jongdae, who seemed to understand certain situations without being told what was wrong about them, existed.   
“Yes, please,” he whispered and stood up in a flash when Jongdae arose from his seat. Mr. Park watched them from afar but didn’t say anything when he witnessed the boy leaving the theater room, Jongdae shielding the older guy from the glances that were thrown at them. Perhaps I really have done him good, he thought when they were no longer in sight, perhaps he really has somebody he can finally trust now.


	2. Almost Black

The sun had set without him essentially realizing it. The curtains were still left open and hung on either side of the window so that the light of the city outside shone through the panes to Minseok’s left. The cup of coffee he had made for himself stood on the table in front of his couch half empty, already cold due to being untouched since about three hours ago when Minseok had rushed to the door when the bell had rang. Jongdae had stood there, panting and with red cheeks because of the cold, but with one of the biggest smiles Minseok had ever seen on his face.

 

“Hey!” he had greeted his best friend and hugged him shortly before moving aside so that the younger guy was able to step into his small apartment. Jongdae’s hair had caught some snowflakes and glistened in the yellow light which was radiating from the small lamp about both of their heads.  
“Hi, Minseok!” he had said when he was still panting slightly before he kicked off his shoes since he knew how bad his best friend hated any kind of dirt and since the streets were muddy and wet due to the snow that steadily fell from the sky in a slow dance. His jacket was mostly soaked when he shook it off of his shoulders to hang it on a coat hook in the hallway, because he had been walking here to the man’s home from downtown, what had taken him approximately 20 minutes - if not longer. “I’m sorry to bother you at this time of the day.”  
“How many times do I have to tell you that you are never a bother,” Minseok scolded him in a soft voice and gave him a warm smile before he reached out to ruffle the man’s hair. The wet droplets in it had disturbed him somehow.

Jongdae had hung his head a bit to grant him better access as he chuckled quietly. “I don’t know, perhaps I’ll actually believe it one day.”  
“I hope so,” he had muttered as he carded his fingers though the damp strands one more time before he took a step back. “Anyway, not that I don’t like it, but why are you here?”  
“I have to tell you something,” Jongdae quickly had said and took hold of his wrist to drag him into the living room.  
One of the man’s favorite books laid on the couch as if he had just thrown it aside when he heard the doorbell. He had read it often enough that the pages were wrinkled and wore evidences of all the times he had picked it up – the undersides of some of them were wavy because he had almost dropped it into the bathtub one time, one had chocolate-stains on it from when he had accidently laid a piece of the sweet on it instead of the table, a few had a rip from when Minseok had left it open and his cat thought it would be a good idea to scratch the white paper until the (back then fifteen year-old) boy had tried to get a grip on it before it got any worse. There were so many more stories in the book than just the one that stood on the pages in black ink.

“Is it that important that you couldn’t wait until tomorrow or have you already forgotten about our weekly arrangement?” It was usual for the friends to meet up every Wednesday, Friday and Sunday evening, taking turns cooking and bringing the wine, to just catch up about their lives and spend some time together because they didn’t really have the possibility to do that much often since Minseok’s work-schedule paired with his university duties and Jongdae’s collage appointments didn’t meet most of the times. This week, Minseok had to prepare his best friend’s favorite food and Jongdae was responsible for bringing the right amount of alcohol.

To his surprise, Jongdae had nodded with a serious expression and sat down on the sofa, taking the book and placing it next to the half full cup of the dark, bitter liquid Minseok loved. “It is that important. I didn’t want to wait until it was maybe too late to tell you.”  
“You are scaring me,” he had muttered as he plopped down next to him, one leg folded under his body with his right arm laying on the backrest to look at the younger man properly. “You are not sick and dying, are you?”  
“Of course not!” he had exclaimed rather quickly and shook his head rapidly. “Look at me, do I make an impression like that?”  
“No, you don’t but you look like you are way too excited for this time of the week and day,” Minseok had defended himself and shifted slightly in his seat. He had a bad feeling about all of this.

Jongdae had smiled shyly while he had reached down to push one hand inside of the pocket of his jeans. “It’s nothing horrible you have to worry about, it’s quite… beautiful? I think you will like it.”  
To his own surprise, Minseok hadn’t felt relived or more lighthearted, it was actually the opposite. Something just had just given him an uneasy hunch in the pit of his stomach, even more so when his eyes flickered down to the hand that was still buried in the blue fabric of his friend’s pants.  
“Just tell me, if it’s that important.” Minseok had forced out in a chuckle that didn’t last long when he was able to witness what was almost hidden in Jongdae’s palm. His first need that had arisen in him was to scream, the second had come with the feeling of a corded up throat followed by the need to run to the bathroom because he had felt like throwing up. The dark red - almost black - velvety box had looked all too familiar to him, he knew exactly what would be found inside if the younger guy decided to snap it open.

“No,” he had wanted to whispered but no sound had made it past his lips when he looked up to hopefully catch a glimpse of mock inside the man’s eyes, something which would tell him that this was nothing more than a cruel joke to play games with him. The shimmer of obvious joy in his gaze had told him otherwise and that was what caused something inside him to break. A stabbing pain was floating through his ribcage back then as his heart jumped painfully against the bones which had tried their maddest to hold it back from breaking free. Not that it had made a difference if it had fallen out of his chest to shatter on the wooden floor to their feet, it had felt like this anyway.

“I bought it about a week ago,” Jongdae had said quietly as he had fixed his gaze on the box lovingly, the tip of his forefinger sliding over the velvety surface gingerly. “I’m going to propose later this evening. I already talked to her father and got us his blessing, he wishes me the best luck.” The man had chuckled when he had snapped it open in his hands, revealing the golden ring that shone in the soft light that fell through the window. A single, small diamond was placed in the middle of the thin band, twinkling when Jongdae had held it out for his best friend to take. The man had accepted it with slightly shaking fingers. It had felt too terribly wrong, so incredibly painful that he had wanted nothing more than to snap the box shut and throw it out of the window so that he would have never had to see it again.

“Why now,” he had forced out, trying so hard to sound steady and secure but it just hadn’t been possible with the lump in his throat at all. “You are so young, both of you are.”  
“But we have been together for over four years now,” Jongdae had explained, obviously prepared for this kind of questions. “I love her and I don’t see that changing at any point in the future. I want to spend the rest of my life with her, Minseok, I don’t doubt that the slightest. I don’t have a reason to wait.”  
The older man had only been able to nod, biting down on his bottom lip to somehow keep himself together, with his head down to shield his watery eyes from the look of his best friend. He mustn’t cry in this moment - that was absolutely not an option. So he had pretended to observe the ring from every angle, until he was sure that he wouldn’t break out in tears when he gave it back and willed the corners of his mouth to lift.  
“It’s beautiful, I think she won’t be able to stop looking at it once you place it on her finger.” I wouldn’t be able to, either.

Obviously glad about his best friend’s approval, Jongdae had grinned before he had placed it back in his pocket again. “So I have your blessing, too?”  
“Of course,” he had laughed and was standing up then to pull the man in his arms, pressing him against his own frame closely, his arms wrapping around his shoulders securely. Jongdae had mirrored the action and chuckled against Minseok’s shirt when the man laid his head on his shoulder.  
“Thank you,” he had said quietly, oblivious to the tears that threatened to spill form the older man’s eyes, that he worked so hard to hold back, oblivious to the way Minseok held him – as if he would lose him altogether once they pulled apart. It had felt like it, at least.

 

Now it was as dark as it could get in the living room where Minseok was sitting, alone again with his phone beside his leg. The tears were flowing free not too soon after the younger boy had left, leaving him in his dark thoughts and a place that felt more like hell than home to the man who was fighting a battle with himself, invisible for others.  
You knew that you never stood a chance against her, he told himself, his gaze fixed on a point over the black screen of his TV but he actually wasn’t able to concentrate on anything, You knew he would propose to her sooner than later. You knew that you would lose him before you even turned 25, why do you act like you didn’t expect this at all?  
Pulling his knees close to his chest, he wrapped his arms around his legs and buried his face in the fabric of his sweatpants-covered knees. Sobbing quietly to himself, he drowned in the emotions that threatened to pull him in a state of absence and apathy. This was nothing uncommon, he knew what would follow. When the tears would stop, there would be numbness which would spread to all parts of his small frame until he couldn’t feel anything anymore. His eyes wouldn’t weep again since his body would refuse to acknowledge any sadness, pushing it and everything else way until Minseok wouldn’t be able to do anything but breathe. It had happened before, he knew how to deal with it by then.

But it was not this moment, yet. His shoulders still shook with every uneven breath he took and let out, cut off by the sobs that made it impossible to fall back into the normal rhythm. It had been quite long since he had cried like this the last time, back when he wasn’t able to accept the fact that he had more than friendly feelings for Jongdae, back when he didn’t know why he felt like throwing up every time he saw him and Mihyun hugging or (god. Forbid.) kissing, back when he lay awake at night and tried to push away the craving he had for a certain boy to lay next to him, to cuddle with him and hold him close. It was easier when he finally accepted that he wasn’t as straight as he thought he would be but the impression of being rejected every single day, when he saw them or heard Jongdae talking about her, didn’t fade and was low-key still there until then.

His thoughts were running wild inside his head, he wasn’t able to pick up with them any longer and it felt like his head was going to burst any second soon if he didn’t do anything about it soon but he wasn’t able to stand up, he wasn’t able to stretch his upper body since he felt like his ribcage would burst the instant he sat up properly with his heart still pounding painfully like a vise was gripping it and tried to make it unmoving and immobile. Tightening his arms around his legs, he wanted nothing more than to fade out the pain, to push back the tears that didn’t seem to stop and to fight against the nausea that still pooled in his stomach. The ring of his phone beside him pulled him out of the pitiful state he was in and made him look up, praying to all the gods that could perhaps exist that it wasn’t Jongdae. After he had blinked away most of the blurriness that had cumbered his eyesight and was able to make out a name on the up-lit screen, he sighed in relief before he stretched out one arm to take it.

“Yes, Kyungsoo?” he rasped and cleared his throat, still in the crouched down position and hugging himself tightly.  
“ _Minseok! I have tried to call you at least four times already!”_ the young man with his surprisingly deep voice exclaimed. “What were you doing?”  
“It’s not important,” he mumbled and angrily found that he was still crying.  
_“Are you… are you okay?”_ Kyungsoo asked, now a lot more concerned, sounding more like a worried father than anything else.  
“I’m… I,” he took a deep breath and shook his head then as a sob broke his lips. “No, I’m absolutely not.”  
_“I’ll be there in a few.”_

Ever since they had been roommates in their early days of university, they had a special kind of friendship. Jongdae would always come first for Minseok and Kyungsoo was aware of that, but that didn’t stop the two of them to feel more like brothers than anything. If one was sick, the other would bring medicine, if one was sad, the other would come over with chocolate and some comedy movies, if one had a problem, the other would be itching to solve it. It worked for both of them even after they had decided to move in their own apartments since they still met up regularly and worked in the same café together even if Kyungsoo was in the kitchen and Minseok behind the counter or functioned as a waiter most of the time.  
Sighing and squeezing his eyes close as he tried to get his breathing under control again, he felt the nausea fading slowly. There had been times when he had rushed to the toilet in situations like this to throw up everything he had eaten that day due to his body’s desperate attempts to get rid of all bad that had invaded his personal space - be it physical or psychological – so that he was quite glad now that this didn’t seem to be the case today.

He wasn’t sure how much time had flown by when he heard keys jingling outside of the door, then one being pushed inside the lock and after that the promissory click which signaled him that he wouldn’t be alone in a few seconds from then on.  
“Minseok?” the familiar voice called out for him, paired with the shuffling of clothes that were taken off and the quiet bang from the closing door.  
“In here,” he said in a low register, hoping that the small guy would hear him (or if not guess where he was). Quick feet rustled over his floor a moment before a hand was placed on his shoulder.  
“Hey, Seok,” Kyungsoo said in a ginger tone and rubbed his palm over the man’s shoulder soothingly. “May I turn on the lights?”  
Minseok shrugged and lifted his head slightly. “I don’t really care.”

Huffing out a frustrated sigh, the younger man skipped over to the shelf that hung over the TV and took the lighter which always laid there before he began to light up all candles that were distributed in the living room until it was filled with the warm, fluttering shimmer radiating from them. He then sat down beside the man, taking notice of the coffee that looked way too cold for Minseok to drink before he let his gaze slide over his friend’s blotchy face - his cheeks held traces of the many tears which had flown over them over them in the past time, his lashes stuck together, too, while his eyes were casted downwards to avoid the worried look Kyungsoo gave him.

“What happened?” he asked in a quiet voice, keeping his distance since he knew that Minseok would only feel worse if somebody tried to infiltrate his personal space in a situation like this.  
“Jongdae,” he whispered and bit down on his bottom lip, “he…”  
“Did you two fight?” he asked with hunched eyebrows. If he remembered right, they did never fight, not when they were still in school and not in the four years since they had known each other now. If they did now, it must have been a pretty horrible reason.  
“No, we didn’t.” Minseok shook his head and then let it fall on the backrest behind him. “It’s just that he… he wants to propose to Mihyun today.”  
Kyungsoo blinked in surprise. “So? Good for him, that doesn’t mean that something will change for you, though.”  
“That’s not the point,” Minseok sighed and rubbed one palm over his face, swallowing hard for what he was about to say. Even if they were this close, they had never talked about Minseok’s preferences. It was not that he was scared about the younger man’s reaction (his brother was gay for god’s sake) but it was just that the feelings he had for his best friend were never meant for anybody else to know - not for as long as he had them, that was. He knew that hell would break loose if Jongdae ever heard that Minseok liked him more than he should so that the older man didn’t want to tell him ever. Not even over his dead body.

But simple as the issue itself was, he turned his eyes to the ceiling and let out the breath he had held involuntary before he plainly said, “I love him.”  
“You – what?” Kyungsoo’s usually big eyes looked like they would escape from his head any moment soon. Laughing bitterly about his shocked reaction, Minseok wanted to bury himself to never be seen again. The words didn’t seem to flow freely, he fought with himself for what he should say, for how he should explain. Maybe hell really was freezing over in this moment.

“I have been in love with him for quite a long time now,” he forced out before a broken sounding chuckle made its way past his lips. “Isn’t it funny and just totally cliché? The typical gay-guy-falls-for-his-straight-best-friend story. And now he wants to marry her, two years after he has finished school and he doesn’t even know I’m in love with him and I… I just feel like life is too unfair.” He wiped one sleeve of his thick, yellow pullover over his cheeks and held back another sob. “This is too much I – I don’t know how I should continue I mean… I know I’m young and that there are plenty of fish in the sea but they are not him and that’s the problem! I don’t think that there will ever be someone who’s more perfect, who clicks better with me, someone whom I would love more than him so… what if he is the one… the one for me? What if I never feel that way about anybody else again? I…I-“ he shook his head rapidly and tried to blink away the tears that didn’t seem to come to an end. His head and throat, his chest and eyes hurt like hell, his voice sounded so freaking croaked the words were almost inapprehensible.

“I thought I could deal with it, with them being happy together, b-but I can’t. My heart stings so much all the time and I am not even able to look at him anymore without feeling like I’m being stabbed. I don’t know how I should do this any longer and I’m not even sure if I want to a-and now he is going to marry her.”

As much as Kyungsoo wanted to hold back, he couldn’t take it any more when he saw how desperately tight Minseok hugged his own upper body, fingertips clawing at the fabric of his pullover and the skin under it on either side of his ribcage, so he skidded over and gathered the shattered man in his arms to hold him as close as he needed it. To his great surprise, Minseok didn’t push him away but instead wrapped his own arms around Kyungsoo's small body and hugged him back as if his life depended on it while he quietly cried into the crook of his neck.  
“I’m sorry,” the younger man mumbled as he felt how bad Minseok was shaking, “I had no idea, I shouldn’t have asked.”

Some seconds without an answer flew by until he had gathered enough strength to croak out, “It is okay, I should have told you earlier.”  
“No,” Kyungsoo whispered and shook his head slowly, “You don’t have to tell me anything, you have the right to keep some secrets to yourself, but I’m glad that you trust me enough to tell me this, I just wish I knew how to help you properly.”  
Pulling back slightly, since he had a pretty hard time to breathe, Minseok casted his eyes down and hunched his eyebrows together. “I don’t think that there is much you could do, just… I don’t know, just don’t tell him and please… don’t go…”

A great amount of fear was shining in his eyes, when their gazes met after some time. Kyungsoo realized then, that this was what Minseok was terrified of the most: losing the only ones he actually and truly loved, be it the brotherly love he had for him or the romantic, exhausting love he felt for Jongdae (that probably ran way deeper than the feelings Mihyun ever had for him, Kyungsoo decided), whether due to them being disgusted by him because of how he did like his gender or because Jongdae would perhaps be uncomfortable if he found out that there were serious feelings involved. Even if they had never been close, Kyungsoo knew Jongdae enough to guess that when the young man would ever find out, he would most likely try to create a big distance between him and Minseok - not because he would be grossed out or something like that, but because he would want to keep his best friend away from the pain which would unavoidably come with the theory of him and Mihyun being together. Humans made it worse most of the time if they tried to do things right, Kyungsoo spoke from experience.

“I won’t go,” he whispered finally and rubbed his palm over Minseok’s back in a soothing manner. That was the least he could do. “Do you want me to make you a cup of tea to calm your nerves?”  
The older man nodded and slid his sweater paws over his face, then he let them fall in his lap. His eyes were swollen, red and still glistened a bit in the flickering light of the candles around them but there were no more traces of tears on the skin of his flushed cheeks. He reached for the tissue box that stood on the table in front of the sofa and took one out when his friend was making his way to the kitchen, blowing his nose ungracefully while Kyungsoo poured water in the kettle before he reached up to take a cup out of a shelf above his head. After so many visits in so many months, almost years, he knew where everything was so that he didn’t have to rummage around until he had found teabags. Deciding to take Minseok’s favorite green tea, he smiled sadly to himself before he put it in the cup and placed it next to the kettle in which the water was almost boiling already.

Minseok laid his head on both of his hands after he had placed his feet back on the ground again, closing his eyes and sighing when he felt a wave of calmness hitting him. Perhaps his body was too exhausted to fight against himself anymore. The uneasiness in chest was still there, as well as the pain and the fear of breaking down soon once again but there were no more tears he could shed, his throat was too sore to let another sob pass by just like his heart was too heavy to race any longer. A breakdown was more tiresome than a marathon sometimes.  
Now he was torn between cursing at himself for being a burden for Kyungsoo, but part of him was too glad that he had finally told someone, that he finally wasn’t drowning lonely in his feelings anymore. Deciding to spare himself this new conflict, he just settled for being glad and thankful for Kyungsoo that he was still here, that he let him cry it all out and even offered to stay here and make him something to drink since (cold) coffee would most likely not be the best idea now.

When his friend shuffled back into the living room, he didn’t look up but whispered a small, “Thanks,” when he heard the porcelain cup being placed on the wooden table. Knowing him, he had made his favorite tea since Kyungsoo was always able to guess what he needed most in moments like this – even if it had been a quite long time since he had seen Minseok breaking down like that. If he remembered right, that took place when his father had died after he had lain in a hospital for about three weeks after falling into coma due to an accident he had denn part in. That was about one and a half years ago and Kyungsoo had been the first to see Minseok after he had gotten the news since they had been roommates back then. The young man had sat on the floor next to his bed, all curled up into a ball and crying quietly to himself, not looking up or even acknowledging anybody’s existence until Jongdae had stepped into their dorm and was able to cradle him in arms. Kyungsoo had left them alone then, not wanting to make it harder on Minseok than it already was. It seemed like life had played him not only that shitty card.

“Do you want me to call work?” Kyungsoo asked after some time of heavy silence since Minseok still didn’t seem to budge sometime soon. “You don’t look like you can go there tomorrow to serve couples with a happy look on your face.”  
“I can do it myself,” he croaked and straightened his spine, looking up with a tired smile on his lips. “They will believe me if my voice sounds like this.”  
“Okay,” he said quietly and reached for the man’s phone to give it to him. The screen was still black, meaning that there was no message from a certain someone, yet. A part of Minseok was glad about it because that meant that there was still hope. Perhaps he wasn’t able to get through it, perhaps she said no and broke up with him, perhaps she thought that he was moving too fast, too and- He mentally shook his head and chastened himself for thoughts like this. What was important was that Jongdae was happy and if that included marrying his girlfriend then so be it, it wasn’t like he stood a chance against her, anyway. When he turned it on, he hissed quietly and blinked as the sudden brightness made his eyes sting even more than before, but he quickly recovered and half-blindly typed in the number of the café he and Kyungsoo worked at. It took some time, but after a while somebody picked up.

 _“Cupid’s pastry shop, you are talking to Kangwoo, how may I help you?”_  
“Good evening, boss, it’s Minseok,” the man rasped and played with the sleeve of his sweater with his free hand a bit. He wasn’t keen on lying at all but he didn’t think he would actually be able to serve happy couples all day long tomorrow. “I hope I don’t call at an inappropriate time?”  
_“Dear god, Minseok, you sound awful!”_ the middle aged man exclaimed, making Minseok flinch since it was pretty loud through the phone.  
“Yeah, I don’t… I don’t feel good at all.”  
_“I’ve guess that much. I hope you don’t plan on turning up like this tomorrow, do you?”_  
Chuckling quietly to himself because he knew that his boss would be in his caring-hyung-mode the second he witnessed one his workers being sick, he shook his head slightly. “No, that’s why I’m calling. I know it’s late and everything but I don’t think it would be that much of a good idea to work tomorrow.”  
_“Absolutely not, I would have send you home the second you stepped in here, anyway,”_ Kangwoo scowled before he continued in a much softer tone, _“Don’t worry about it, I’ll find somebody to cover your shift. Please tell me when you are feeling better, okay? And don’t push yourself, if you don’t feel like it please feel free to stay home for as long as you want and need, I’m not mad at you.”_

A wave of warmness washed over him when he heard these words. Even though he had only started working at the small café half a year ago, he was treated like he had been there since he was a child but that was what every employee experienced. Kangwoo had always been a great boss to every of them, when he was more like a friend than anything else.  
“Okay,” he rasped and nodded to himself, “I’ll call you when I feel better.” He decided to only silently think that this could take more than a few days since recovering from a broken heart was immensely harder than from a simple cold.  
_“Good, I hope that you are not alone if you are not well?”_  
“I am not,” Minseok confirmed and glanced over to Kyungsoo who was currently taking the teabag out of the cup on the table and placed it on a small plate he had taken with him for that exact reason. “Your favorite chef is with me.”  
_“Oh, please tell Kyungsoo I said hey and that of he needs time to take care of you, I can cover his shifts, too, it’s no problem.”_  
“Thank you so much, I will tell him. Now have a nice, calm evening, Kangwoo,” he said with a small smile as he felt his body relax a bit more.  
_“You too, I hope you’ll feel better soon. Bye, Minseok!”_

A small clicking noise symbolized him that the line had gone dead, so he took his phone from his ear and placed it next to his leg with the screen up – just in case somebody would text him before he explained his friend what they were talking about. Kyungsoo was smiling now, too, as he heard about the kindhearted offer their boss had made.  
“He’s such a good guy,” he mused and shook his head, “I-“  
They were interrupted by a small, almost inaudible single ring and the light that suddenly radiated from the older man’s phone.

_Jongdae <3 has sent you a message!_

All color drained from Minseok’s face and the smile was erased in the same instant he read the small notification.  
“Hey,” Kungsoo said softly and placed one hand on his friend’s shoulder, the thumb grazing over the yellow fabric, “you don’t have to read it right now. You can wait if you are not ready, that’s okay.”  
Minseok wasn’t able to answer. All possibilities of what could stand in that message were racing through his head, even the ones which were totally and utterly impossible.

_She beat me to it! She proposed! We are really getting married!_

_I can’t do it, I’m too nervous. Do you mind if I come over so that we can figure a plan out together?_

_She said no and broke up with me, apparently she doesn’t love me as much as I love her._

_I realized something very important so I couldn’t do it but I need to talk to you right now._

Shaking his head quickly to get rid of those kind of thoughts, a mix between panic and a creepy calmness arose inside of him.  
“What if-“ Minseok began to say but his voice cracked and he found himself unable to continue until he cleared his throat and looked up at Kyungsoo with in fear widened eyes. “What if this is the end? What if everything changes from now on.”  
Hurt replaced the worry in Kyungsoo as he watched how his friend reacted to such a small notification. He must have been a really big idiot to now realize how much Minseok was hung up on Jongdae until now. Jongdae was an even bigger idiot.  
“That doesn’t mean anything,” he assured Minseok quickly even though both of them knew that these were empty words. Mihyun had talked about her and Jongdae’s wedding ever since their graduation, why would she say no if he finally mustered up the courage to ask her?  
“Perhaps he didn’t even do it, yet, perhaps he has gotten cold feet and backed up before she even saw the ring.”

Minseok nodded with his gaze fixed on a point over Kyungsoo’s head, looking at nothing in particular. That was it, he said to himself, the end of an era, the end of everything.  
Before the situation could get even worse, he picked up the phone without further ado and opened the message. He hadn’t even read the three words plastered on the screen properly when the electronic device slid out of his hand and fell to the floor with a quiet bang. The last shimmer of hope, the last light in his eyes was suddenly erased as if somebody had decided to empty a whole bucket of ice water on the small little flame that was still noticeable until this moment. No more tears made their way over his cheeks, his eyes didn’t even weep the slightest, but the numbness was there now, in every inch of every limb of his body. It was like a wave of nothing-ness had hit him and pulled him under the surface where no light was visible, were hope no longer existed and everything was so utterly unimportant, he didn’t even care anymore. Only because of the three little words that were plastered on the screen that was a little bit broken now due to the fall on the wooden floor to their feet. But even with the cracks in the glass, the message was still readable.

_Jongdae <3 [10:02pm]: She said yes!_


	3. Unblemished White

Minseok couldn’t remember how he had gone to bed, let alone knew what kind of pills Kyungsoo must have given him to fall asleep. Usually, in situations like this, he stayed awake until the next morning came without being able to close his eyes at all, he then went to university or work with a smile on his lips as if the world around him wasn’t crumbling the slightest. That was why he was more than surprised when he woke up in his bed the next morning.  
  
Groaning quietly because of all the aching muscles under his skin, he sat up and yawned while rubbing his swollen eyes with both fists. There was light peeking inside his room from under the closed curtains and the small gap from the door that was left ajar a bit. It seemed silent in the whole apartment, Minseok didn’t hear a single evidence which would tell him that Kyungsoo was still around – and that was alright. If Minseok recalled correctly, the younger man had stayed around until he had fallen unconscious, muttering words to calm his friend down and rubbing his back until… the memory ended there and Minseok wasn’t even sure if he wanted to know what had followed after this.  
  
Deciding that lying in bed all day long would only make it worse instead of better, he threw both legs over the edge of his mattress and hissed quietly when his feet came in contact with the cold floor. He was still clad in his boxer shorts and the shirt he had worn under his pullover yesterday, what could mean that 1) he had been still coherent enough to take the rest of his clothes off himself or 2) Kyungsoo undressed him but gave Minseok enough privacy to not strip him down all the way.  
Sighing, because there was still nothing more than thick, white fog and mist filling his head when he tried to remember the last evening, he pushed himself up off the bed and stumbled a step backwards when stars exploded right in front of his eyes and blinded his sight, making the small man almost fall onto the bed again due to the loss of balance in process. Looking back, he hadn’t eaten anything since around 2pm yesterday. After Jongdae had dropped the proposal-bomb on him, Minseok hadn’t even spared a single thought at food, losing his appetite (he usually always had, even if it was just small) the second his best friend had taken that damned little box out of his pocket.  
  
Slowly, the sight of the room around him came back, but he was still cautious when he made his way to and through the hallway, not wanting to push himself too much. It was cold in the apartment, as if somebody had opened all of the windows and had forgotten about them when they decided to go to bed. Being with unshod feet and only in his relatively thin clothes, Minseok shivered slightly, goosebumps arising all over his skin - the heavier the closer he got to the living room. The curtains were swaying in the wind that found its way into the apartment through the open window, single snowflakes coming with it, melting when they descended to the ground. They fell slower and a little less than yesterday evening, yet the white dots seemed bigger.  
The coldness crept up his body when Minseok went closer to the framed pane that softly fluttered against the wall in every breeze that came from the wind outside. The man held his hand out but kept his arms close to his body, with his palm up to catch some of the beautiful, white ice. A few of the crystals actually managed to land in his unblemished skin. He watched how they slowly turned into tiny droplets of water, one after another melting into his hand.

“Do you really want to catch a cold that badly?” a familiar, deep voice asked behind him. Somehow, Minseok managed not to flinch even though he didn’t expect the younger man to still be around. Without breaking his focus away from the snow on his palm, he shrugged.  
“I’m not one to become sick easily, you out of all people should know that pretty well.”  
“That may be true but I still don’t approve your clothing. If you want to play Jack Frost that bad, at least put on some pants for heaven’s sake.”  
“Thank you for taking care of me, Kyungsoo,” Minseok said quietly without responding to his friend's nagging and turned his head a bit, not enough to look at the smaller man, though. “And for not leaving even after all of… this, whatever it was yesterday.”  
A sigh was heard before Kyungsoo walked over to him, closing the window since Minseok didn’t seem to want to do it, before he grasped the older man’s wrists and pulled him around only to catch him in a ginger hug.  
“Don’t say that,” he hissed, closing his eyes while he tried to warm up the ice-cold man in his arms. “You would do the same for me, so don’t even think about it.”  
A shiver hit Minseok when Kyungsoo’s body-temperatured front was pressed against him, making the younger man step back.  
“Go upstairs and take a shower, I’ll prepare something to eat for you, alright?” he asked and rubbed both hands over Minseok’s upper arms. Nodding in response, he searched for his younger friend’s gaze.  
“Okay.”

 

The clothes he had worn the day before laid on the washing machine in his bathroom, all of them folded neatly. The room was nothing but hot compared to the living area, white tiles burning under his feet when his icy skin came in contact with them but the sensation was strangely pleasing somehow. Another shiver ran down his spine when his body slowly accepted the temperature as Minseok walked over to the washbasin, placing both hands on it to stabilize himself while he leaned a bit in the direction of the mirror to examine his appearance. The tiredness flowing through his head was undeniably visible, not only in Minseok’s eyes. Of course, the lids were swollen and tinted with red, almost seeming unfocused in their droopy look due to all the crying with dark circles, evidence of a short, exhausting night, under them in a emphasizing way. It radiated from the rest of his face, too: his skin seemed paler than usual, not as smooth as yesterday morning. Uncombed strands of hair fell all over his forehead and tickled his eyebrows, the black strands seeming in knots without shining a single bit.

Minseok wanted to take a shower but, already knowing what he would do that day, he decided against it. He would have time for that in the afternoon, when it would make more sense than now. So Minseok just quickly took the clothes he had worn yesterday, putting on the pants and tugging the pullover under one arm before reaching over to the cabinet that held his hairbrush and various other utensils he would sooner or later need to make himself decent-looking again – but that could wait at least until breakfast. Wincing quietly since the strands stuck together tightly and didn’t seem to want to part at all, he combed his hair carefully until he was more or less satisfied with the way it looked. He would wash them later, anyway, so it didn’t really matter if they were the slightest bit greasy. Minseok threw himself one last glance and sighed as he met his own, tired eyes in the mirror, before he turned his back to himself and skipped out of the bathroom to go back to Kyungsoo.

The younger man had already made some scrambled eggs and was now placing toast on a plate for Minseok, humming his favorite song quietly as he walked through the kitchen as if he had lived here since the beginning – opening drawers and cupboards to find glasses, knives and forks without actually searching for them since he knew where everything was kept.  
“Smells good, Kyungie,” the older man complimented when he set foot in the kitchen, leaning against the table with his arms crossed in front of his chest as he watched the small guy shuffling around.  
“Don’t sound so surprised, you love everything I cook for you,” he shot back but smiled at him in the end when he placed the plate next to Minseok and motioned for him to sit down. “Now eat, I bet you are starving.”  
Shrugging in response, he pulled one chair out for himself, hanging his pullover over the backrest, and then nodded in the direction of the other one for his friend to sit down, too. “Not really but since you made such great effort to prepare me something, I will eat it anyway.”

Sighing to himself, Kyungsoo plopped down on the seat right across the table and laid both hands on the wooden surface, the fingertips of his left one grazing over the back of Minseok’s hand.  
“I don’t know how horrible you must be feeling at the moment, but I beg you… don’t stop eating, don’t push yourself to much but instead take even better care of yourself than before. You need it more than ever.”  
Perhaps Minseok should have just lied. So he shook his head and forced himself to smile at the man in front of him. “Don’t worry, I won’t do anything bad to myself. It’s just a bit too much at the moment and then I don’t feel like eating or doing anything in general, but that will pass. It always does,” Minseok responded quietly and took his fork in one hand, picking up a bit of the scrambled eggs and chewing it slowly as some kind of proof that he wouldn’t let himself down.  
Seeming satisfied by the action, Kyungsoo nodded and leaned back in his chair, watching Minseok with eyes full of cares.

“Don’t you want to eat anything?” the older man asked at some point when his plate was half finished, only the toast was still untouched. Kyungsoo rubbed one hand over his eyes and shook his head, the look on his face was a bit troubled when their eyes met again.  
“I promised Chanyeol that we would eat together today since we need to finish a project that’s due Friday and he proposed that we could do it at his and Baekhyun’s dorm because he is alone today and hates my apartment for a reason I don’t really get.”  
Minseok chuckled lowly. “Could be because you barely have any furniture and never open the curtains. But alright, I don’t want to hold you back in any kind of way, you can go if you need or want to, you have already done too much for me, anyway.”  
Groaning at the response, Kyungsoo threw his head back and with that both arms in the air.  
“You have to be kidding me! I already told you that I like to take care of you and that I don’t mind! I would rather spend time with you than Chanyeol either way and you know it!”

Ever since they had a small encounter at one of the local bars, Kyungsoo was not very fond of their tall friend. It was before Chanyeol and Baekhyun had even gotten together but the big man had a thing for him already when he decided to get shitfaced one day, calling Minseok if he wanted to come. Not one to refuse an offer like this (especially not because Minseok didn’t actually know whether Chanyeol actually liked their mutual friend or if he just wanted a good time and since Minseok was a good guy, he had wanted to make sure the tall man had the right intentions), he agreed to go to the pub with him but asked if he could bring Kyungsoo, who was sitting on his bed at that moment and ate a whole bar of chocolate to take his mind off the breakup he was going through. The small man had protested loudly, declaring that he would rather die than pull down the mood for every participant of their small group until Minseok had dragged him up and put him into some tight pants, arguing that he had no say in that matter and that he would be thankful one day. Needless to say, he was wrong.  
When they had arrived, Chanyeol had already had three drinks and was greeting them with a loud, too high pitched scream for his voice, when he had spotted them entering the bar. Kyungsoo had almost spun around on his heel if it hadn’t been for Minseok holding him back. The two newcomers had caught up to Chanyeol’s level rather quickly (Kyungsoo earlier than Minseok since the older man had the highest alcohol-tolerance of them), what ended in a fit of unnecessary laughers, too much body contact and a quite heated kiss between Kyungsoo and Chanyeol. The youngest later defended himself in saying that he had just searched for a bit of comfort after the breakup and that Chanyeol had just been the first one available to take that job, the giant had just rubbed his nape and shrugged, explaining that Kyungsoo kind of looked like Baekhyun when it was dark and he was drunk.  
“You are spacing out again,” a voice called him back into reality. Shaking his head to clear his mind, Minseok blinked rapidly.  
“Sorry, I was just thinking about you and Chanyeol.”  
A dark gaze and a full body shudder was the smaller man’s first reaction. “Don’t remind me, we agreed to never talk about that evening ever again.”

Silence settled in between them until it was broken by the ring of Kyungsoo’s phone. Muttering quiet curses to himself, he pulled it out of his trouser pocket.  
“Speaking of the devil,” he mumbled as he skimmed over the message he had just received before he sat the device on the table with a sigh.  
“I have to go, I’m sorry.”  
Minseok shook his head and leaned back in his chair, looking at the man with a glare. “You should have already went home yesterday and you know it.” He pushed the plate in front of him away a bit, some of the food still on it but he was feeling slightly queasy again and didn’t want to push his luck more than absolutely necessary. “I just have one question before you go.”  
“Of course, what is it?” Kyungsoo asked as he stood up and took the dirty dish with him, throwing away the leftovers before he placed the plate next to the sink where a pan was already left.  
“What happened after Jongdae sent the message?”  
Judging by the way Kyungsoo only slowly turned his head and not his complete body rather quickly to look at him, he had expected something like this.  
“I am actually not surprised that you don’t remember it. You were quite… I don’t know how to explain it, quite apathetic? I tried to talk to you, to get you to talk back to me but it seemed like you didn’t even hear me. You just stared at the opposite wall with unfocused eyes, even when I started to rub your back. At some point, you jumped up and ran to the bathroom, I followed you and saw you gagging over the toilet, but you didn’t throw up, it just looked like your body wanted to get rid of everything around you somehow. Then you sat down with your back against the wall and continued to stare into nothing until I asked you if you wanted to sleep or stay like that all night long. You stood up, undressed yourself, folded your clothes and then went to bed without saying another word. I stood by your side for a few minutes until I was sure that you really were asleep before I went back to the living room to catch some sleep, too.”

Minseok hung his head as he listened to the explanation and tried to find the appendant pictures which had to be somewhere in his mind, evidences that it had happened like this but there was still nothing but white, obscure fog filling his thoughts when he wanted to recall last night. Somehow, that didn’t come as a surprise – like Kyungsoo had said. The young man had made his way over to Minseok and laid both hands on his shoulders.  
“I want you to be totally honest now, okay? Do you want me to stay? I don’t mind to cancel the meeting with Chanyeol at all, I would love to be here a little longer.”  
Shaking his head slowly, Minseok still didn’t look up. “No, you can go, I’m fine by myself. But still, thank you for being here and taking care of me, I appreciate it a lot.”

The black haired male didn’t move a single muscle after Kyungsoo had left for about half an hour, lost in his own head with thoughts running wild behind his closed eyes. He didn’t even know what exactly he was thinking about all the time but it was enough to give him a headache again. So Minseok decided to do something against it, standing up and picking up the pullover that still hung over his chair, quickly pulling it over his head as he made his way through the hallway. It was totally unlike him to leave dirty dishes without cleaning them before he did anything else, but who would care at the moment when Minseok didn’t because other things were more important than that.

The appropriate shoes stood right next to his thick winter-boots, shining white in the light that radiated from the lamp above his head. He put them on like he was in trance; kneeling down next to them, pushing one feet after another in them, some experienced movements of his hands tying the shoelaces together before he stood up again to throw on a thin jacket. The headphones he always used were still in one of the pockets and his wallet laid next to his keys in a small wooden bowl on top of the shelf that stood next to the coat hooks. Minseok picked both of the items up before he switched off the light and then left his cold apartment.  
Snowflakes and freezing wind hit his face when he stepped out of the hallway and into the city. There were a lot of busy people running around – hurrying to meetings, important appointments, pestering schedules. Minseok stood in between them for a second, watching the cars on the street rushing from one place to another, a few honks here and there whenever somebody missed that the traffic light showed green and no longer red and yellow. A few persons bumped into him since he was just standing on the pavement unmoving, cursing at him or just continuing to run as if nothing happened.

The man took the iPod out of his sweatpants pocket, plugging in the headphones after he had placed them in his ear before he started a playlist he always listened to in situations like this. A relatively fast song began to play, underlining the scene around him with a steady beat. Minseok waited for another few moments before he began to walk and then jog down the pavement, alongside some cars in the direction of downtown. His whole body felt cold when he made the first steps, the already grey, muddy snow under his feet smacking with every step he took, the water not breaking through his shoes yet. He let himself be pulled with the flow, drawing aside for quite a lot of people who stood in his way or just walked too slow in front of him. The icy air made his lungs burn the longer he jogged towards his destination, the huffs he let out visible in the air that attacked his face when he changed the speed of his steps, pushing himself to be a bit faster, to run now when he reached a less packed street where not many people were in his way.  
It didn’t take him longer than 20 minutes to reach the small building that was tucked between a café and a small shop which sold all kinds of goods. Shaking the snow out of his hair with one hand ruffling the strands, he stepped in the gym with a small smile on his lips.

“Minseok!” the girl behind the counter greeted him when she spotted the small man that was still panting, the tip of his nose and ears bright red due to the coldness outside. She was pretty with her long, brown hair, wide eyes and pale skin combined with her slim figure that was noticeable when she walked around the counter to greet one of her favorite customers. Jieun was one of Minseok’s sister’s best friends, slightly younger than the man but as mature as a young woman could be. His lips stretched a bit wider when the girl hugged him for a short moment before she pulled back to examine his appearance in every single, small detail.

“You look like you had a rough night,” Jieun commented and hunched her eyebrows together, a strand of hair falling into her face due to the action but she made no move to brush it aside. “Have you slept at all?”  
“I did, don’t worry,” Minseok assured her and nodded, taking a step back to open his jacket and pull it off his shoulders since he was positively sweating by now. “But yeah, I’ve had better nights.”  
“Why don’t I ask Mark if he can cover here for me so that I can come with you and help you through your workout?” she offered, looking around for her colleague who was currently sitting in the employee’s lounge next to the changing rooms.

A few minutes later, Minseok was clad in his emergency-sports clothes that always laid in one of the lockers in the dressing rooms for when he wasn’t able to bring spare ones from his home. Today was one of these days. The man had counted his run as his warming up and was now walking over to Jieun who already stood next to one of the heavy looking machines which were evenly distributed in the big room. He caught a glimpse of himself when he was walking past one of the mirrors that hung all over the walls. Normally, he wore a loose-fitting t-shirt and some shorts he had usually worn for soccer practice before the winter came, but now a black tank top stuck to his upper body like a second skin, outlining the contours of his body which he had worked so hard for, paired with some grey sweatpants that were already a few years old.  
“Have you been out all night long? I haven’t seen you in this clothes since three months ago when you had this one-night stand with one of your fellow students,” Jieun teased, wiggling his eyebrows in a suggesting manner with a smirk on her plump lips.  
Minseok rolled his eyes but smiled in response, grabbing a white towel from a shelf that hung on the blue-painted wall to his left.  
“No, I actually was at home and went to bed quite early, I just slept like shit and feel like it.”  
“You forgot that you look like it, too,” Jieun piped up, pushing herself up from the bench she had been leaning against until this moment. “Plus it’s Wednesday, and you never come here on Wednesday unless something horrible has happened from which you need to take your mind off.”  
Minseok sighed and placed the towel on the bench, sitting down on it with one leg on either side of the rubber-covered surface before he fixed the cloth he had laid on it to lay down properly without touching the bench itself, hooking his feet under the two rests for this exact usage. He had come to like sit-ups throughout the years.  
  
“Do you remember the time I told you about my crush?”  
Apart from Kyungsoo, only one other person knew about his desperation – and that was Jieun. The only difference between them was that he had never mentioned a name to the girl in front of him or even that him and his crush were best friends. Some secrets must be kept and protected for all it costs, especially since Jieun was pretty close with Jongdae’s girlfriend (now fiancée).  
The woman nodded and kneeled down beside Minseok’s knees, checking that he was in the right position for the exercise he wanted to begin with.  
“Of course I do. You are complaining about him more than you are talking about all other topics together, be it work, university or your friends.”  
“He decided that it would be a good idea to get married,” Minseok explained shortly, knowing that this could lead to the girl finally realizing who the man he was talking about all the time was since there were not many people both of them knew who just got engaged. But to hell with it, he didn’t care about it anymore. So what if she knew?

Jieun’s eyes bulged at his words before a hurt look ghosted across her face.  
“Oh, Minseok, I’m sorry. I feel like an idiot for making such bad jokes, I’m so sorry!”  
He shook his head and placed one hand on either side of his temples. “Don’t be, it’s alright, you couldn’t know.”  
“Judging by the way you look and behave, it isn’t just a small crush, is it?” she asked, laying one hand on his right leg for a little comfort at least. Both of them knew the answer, so Minseok decided to not respond but instead start with his workout.

The time flew by without either of them realizing it. Jieun had walked off to get him a bottle of water after he had realized that he had totally forgotten about that, leaving him sitting alone on a yoga mat on the floor. Not only the muscles of his stomach hurt but also his legs and arms since Minseok had been keen on not only doing some sport for a few minutes. Now his head began to throb slightly due to the lack of water and also because of the small amount of food he had eaten that day. But at least he hadn’t thought of Jongdae the whole time after they had stopped talking about him. Now his best friend ghosted through his mind again, together with the ring he had shown him yesterday. Minseok suddenly felt like throwing up.

“I told you that you shouldn’t overestimate yourself if you had such a bad night,” Jieun scolded him when she came back and plopped down next to him, shoving the bottle in his hand quite forcefully and placing a small towel around his neck to catch some of the droplets that rolled down his skin.  
“I know what I can take,” he argued and took a sip of the water. The coldness calmed his throat a bit and created a stark, welcome contrast to his overheated body. “And thank you.”  
“I would hug you if you weren’t that sweaty and gross right know,” she piped up and laughed at the disgusted grimace Minseok pulled, looking down his body. The top clung to his chest and stomach, some single damp spots were visible on the dark fabric. His arms glistened when his muscles moved under his skin whenever he moved the slightest bit. A wave of pride flowed through Minseok’s whole body when he saw how his figure reacted to the amount of sport.  
“You won’t run home like this, I’ll drive you once you are stretched thoroughly,” Jieun instructed and stood up, patting the man’s shoulder. “Call me if you need anything, I’ll be at the counter in the meantime.” She left before the man was able to argue.

 

The ride to his home was a silent one. Jieun hadn’t turned on the radio, neither of them had made an effort to talk the whole time. Minseok just stared out of the window, watching the other cars and strangers passing by. Almost all of the faces of the crowed were blurred, just one big, anonymous mass of people he would never see let alone recognize ever again. That was until he thought he had seen Jongdae, when he sat up abruptly and looked over his shoulder only to assert that it was somebody he had never met before. The man just had the same jacket Minseok’s best friend wore all the time. Sinking back into his seat with his eyes casted downwards, it felt like a stone was settled in the pit of his stomach.  
When Jieun turned off the engine, they stood in front of the house Minseok lived in. She had spared him worried glances throughout the whole ride, sometimes opening his lips to say something but deciding against it in the end. It was frustrating for both of them.

 

“Thank you for driving me,” Minseok said after a while and turned to smile at her. “Even though you really didn’t have to. Now your car smells like sweat because of me.”  
“Can I ask you a question without you getting mad at me?” Jieun asked without responding to Minseok’s words. She also continued to speak before the man even had the chance to answer her. “Who is the guy you are always talking about? The one you are in love with?”  
“You know it, don’t you?” he said and grabbed the bag that Jieun had lent him for his dirty clothes until they saw each other the next time. It had stood between his feet until that moment when he unfastened his seatbelt, ready to leave the car as soon as possible. “I bet you already knew it since the beginning.”  
“I had my assumptions but no evidence for them,” she corrected him, still in a way too low and calm register. Minseok wanted to flee, to get away from any demands that could be thrown at him. There were too many things going on at the moment, to many people asking too many questions in a too short amount of time.  
“I’m sorry,” she whispered when Minseok reached over to open the door. “I feel so incredibly sorry for you, my heart aches if I even think about what you have to go through. Especially now that they are getting married. I don’t know if Jongdae is just stupefying oblivious or totally blind to not see it, but it's not like that matters anyway.” Jieun shook her head in disappointment before she reached over and pulled the man in for a hug before he was able to escape. Minseok let it happen without returning the embrace somewhat, he just closed his eyes and prayed that she would keep her mouth shut, to Jongdae as well as Mihyun. It would kill him if either of them found out.

“Do you think you can do it?” she asked when she pulled back, her palms still resting on his upper arms. Absolutely not. Please let go of me now. He forced himself to smile and nodded. “Of course I can, don’t worry about me. They have been together for over 4 years and I did it until now, it’s not like a lot will change, right?”  
Jieun didn’t look convinced but she said nothing anymore. She just let the man get out of her car and watched him disappear behind the entrance as fast as he could with his already sore muscles. She sighed and rubbed both hands over her face before she started the engine again, driving off with her thoughts lingering back to Minseok who had almost passed out because fainting was more acceptable than facing the truth for him, and to Jongdae who was not only blind when it came to his best friend but also when it came to himself.

As soon as Minseok was inside, he locked the door behind him, hurried to the bathroom and put the dirty clothes in the laundry before shedding the ones he had worn until then to finally take a shower. It was about 2pm now. He had three more hours until Jongdae would turn up on his doorstep if he wanted to keep their tradition. Until then he would have to get out for some grocery shopping, prepare a meal and most importantly clean up his place to erase any kind of dirt that had made it inside. Firstly, though, he had to care of himself. So Minseok stepped inside the shower and turned on the water, waited until it was the right temperature before he let it hit his body. All the sweat, disgusting feelings and fears seemed to be washed away by the hot fluid that met his skin, disappearing in the drain next to his left foot.  
It took him quite a long time to step out of the shower again. Even though most people tended to think about important stuff when they cleaned themselves, Minseok had always been able to clear his head whenever water was involved – be it swimming, bathing in general or showering – but the moment he caught a glimpse of himself on the mirror, everything came crashing down on him again. The man found it fascinating how little feelings were visible if one knew how to hide them properly.  
His cheeks were tinted in a soft pink, making his whole face glow when the light hit it, his eyes glistened due to the droplets that hung on the tips of his lashes, even the circles under them were lighter and almost gone. Nobody would be able to tell that there still was a storm raging inside of him, clawing at his insides as it tried to break free, to make Minseok crumble to the ground and shatter him into a million tiny pieces. No, he looked so calm, he almost believed what he saw. Almost.  
Not able to watch himself any longer, he reached over to the door on which his towel hung to dry himself, scrubbing his skin until it was red because of the strength he put into this single activity. In the end, his whole body tingled – from the inside as well as from the outside, but nowhere in a good kind of way. Wrapping the fabric around his waist, Minseok made his way to the bedroom, rummaging around in his wardrobe until he had found some decent looking clothes before he dressed himself and then walked to the living room while drying his hair with the towel.  
His phone laid on the table in front of the couch, some cracks in the display as an evidence of yesterday’s evening. Minseok picked it up and pondered whether it would be a good idea to text him or not, not knowing if he really wanted to know the answer to his question. The decision was made for him when he turned it on, purposely ignoring the warning that the battery was low, and saw a message.

_Jongdae <3 [12:03pm]: I don’t know if I’ll be on time today, Mi's parents have invited us over for lunch and I don’t know if they want to have dinner together, too. I’m sorry, Minseok!_

He had expected this somehow, the greater surprise was that there was an answer of him to yesterday's good news.

_You [10:59pm]: Of course she did! I wish you guys all the best, see you tomorrow!_

Kyungsoo must have sent it when Minseok was already unconscious or maybe when he was still apathetic, so that Jongdae wouldn’t entertain suspicion that something was wrong with his best friend. Deciding that there was still hope, that he could still turn up, Minseok typed an answer.

_You [02:33pm]: I’ve guessed that much. Just tell me if I should wait for you or if you can’t make it._

Then he sat down on the couch and looked over to the window. Some single snowflakes were still falling, the sky seemed white so that the ice crystals were almost invisible against it. Goosebumps arose on his skin when he placed the phone back on the table as he waited for some kind of reaction, which he knew would most likely not come until at least two hours had passed by if they were still at Mihyun's parents' house.  
Even though Kyungsoo had closed the window before breakfast so that the apartment had had plenty of time to warm up again, Minseok’s home felt strangely cold when he let his head fall against the backrest and stared at the colorless ceiling.


	4. Blood-Red

It was one of those days again. Minseok was relieved enough to almost break out in tears when he finally entered his apartment again after he had been at a near shop to get some groceries. Every single person outside of his home was too much, it felt like everyone stared at him, judged him, got too close to him. One girl had even had the audacity to hit on him when Minseok had been standing in front of a shelf and considered whether jajangmyeon or ddeokbokki was more fitting for dinner. When the girl had begun to flirt with him, Minseok had almost screamed in frustration because he was just too nice to ignore her or push her off when she placed one hand on his arm to “appreciate your toned body, you work out a lot, don’t you?”. Minseok had the strong urge to take another shower after this.

It sometimes felt like the person who touched him was about to hurt or even stab him whenever they got too close. Back when he was still living with his parents, they had placed their palms on his arms, back or shoulders to show their support or just greet him, but this had been enough to make him flinch because the touch felt so incredibly wrong it almost hurt – how much more if a stranger walked up to him and demanded physical contact.

Now he was safe again, away from the girl that had made his day even worse than it was before, and placed the bag that contained all ingredients for one of Jongdae’s favorite foods on top of the kitchen table and sighed deeply. It somehow felt like Minseok was only able to breathe properly if he was around people he liked or if he was actually alone. Sadly, Minseok knew, the feeling wouldn’t last for long enough, when his phone beeped shortly again. On days like this, it felt like the whole world was mocking him. The only thing he wanted was to be left alone for a few moments without having to face or talk to anybody – just being by himself in peaceful silence for at least ten minutes would be enough. There just wasn’t a sufficient amount of instants which provided this.  
Deciding to just face his fate like the man he was, Minseok picked up the electronical device and unlocked it before his eyes fell on the message somebody had sent to him.

_Jongdae <3 [04:12pm]: I’ll be over at yours around 6!_

An involuntary smile made its way onto Minseok’s lips even though there still was a tugging feeling inside his chest, squeezing his heart tightly and restricting his lungs with that. Forgotten was that girl, the last night, the way he had pushed himself to and even over his limits while trying not to think about the man. Jongdae filled his mind again with a proud little note beside his best friend’s face that was plastered to the front of his brain, saying: At least I haven’t been out for nothing.

If Jongdae had told him that he wouldn’t be able to make it on time or at all, Minseok would have scolded himself for leaving his precious home even though he could have just stayed in the safe zone where nobody would have looked at him. But suddenly, after Minseok had read the message, the outside didn’t seem to be so bad anymore. Perhaps being around people (or more specifically a certain someone) could be effectively manageable.

With a little brighter mood, the man typed a quick answer and then began to put away the groceries before he decided to prepare everything he would need for cooking later. In order to do that, Minseok walked over to the sink to rinse the dirty dishes which were still left from breakfast – his housekeeping-quirk had thankfully come back to him. This was always one of the hints that he was getting better after such an episode.  
Right in the moment Minseok placed the plate and pan in the sink after he had turned on the hot water, his phone rang again. Yet this time it was a call and not only a message.

Minseok had never liked talking to people he couldn’t see. The fact, that they could tell him one thing and mean a completely other without him realizing that they were lying because he couldn’t read their facial expressions or body language at all, ticked him off more than he would like to admit sometimes. Along to that it just gave him a greatly uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach. Due to that, it was always a difficult decision whether he picked up or not. Calling work and apologizing for being sick was one thing, being forced to take part in a complete conversation through the phone an entirely different.

Seeing that it was Kyungsoo who wanted to talk to him, the man sighed once again and touched the green ‘accept’ icon without further ado.

 _“I know you don’t like this but I am in a hurry and don’t have the time to type, so this will have to do,”_ Kyungsoo defended himself before Minseok was able to greet him properly. He sounded a little out of breath but his surroundings were too quiet to guess that he was still outside, so the man assumed that he had just entered his home and was already on his way to work again. Minseok had assured him that he was fine before the younger guy had left his home in the early morning, that Kyungsoo could go to “Cupid’s pastry shop” if he wanted to, that he would be alright even if he was alone. The smaller man had agreed after a short argument, not wanting to start a fight with the already fragile man.

 _“I just wanted to know if you are alright. I know that it’s your and Jongdae’s night, but if you need someone to be there with you or if you don’t want to see him, I am available.”_  
“No, you are not, you have work to do,” Minseok said sternly, but there was a small hint of amusement hidden in his voice. “And I’m fine, you don’t have to come here. Jongdae will be here in about one and a half hours, until then I will cook and keep myself occupied. Things between him and me won’t be different or more difficult than before, so that’s no problem either.”  
_“But if there is something bothering you, you text me immediately and I will come to get you, okay? We can sleep over at mine or even go to Chanyeol if you want to, I’m-“_  
“Kyungsoo!” Minseok interrupted him with a small chuckle. “Calm down, I’m not dying or anything. I thank you very much for your concern and everything you are willing to do for me, but I am seriously and completely okay.” That was only half of the truth, yet it would do for now. The small man had already done so much for him, Minseok didn’t know how he should ever be able to pay him back for all of this, he doubted that he ever could and he also hoped that he would never need to pick up Kyungsoo like the smaller man had done it to him the day before. He just didn’t deserve it at all.

 _“I don’t believe you,”_ Kyungsoo said calmly, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world, _“but it’s you choice if you want to – WOULD YOU MOVE, YOU FUCKER! I HAVE TO BE AT WORK IN TWO MINUTES!”_  
Minseok almost dropped his phone when his friend began to scream at someone invisible for him, hissing when the deep, way too loud voice suddenly almost made his eardrum burst. Another reason why phone calls were an unnecessary pain nobody needed.  
_“Sorry, Minseok,”_ the man grumbled, _“Some asshole decided that sleeping behind the steering wheel during standing in front of a green traffic light would be socially acceptable.”_  
So he hadn’t been home at all after Chanyeol and him were finished, otherwise he would have taken the time to text Minseok since he knew how much the older guy hated to talk to somebody like this.

“You are such an emotional driver,” Minseok commented while he turned off the water before it filled the sink enough to splash over the edges and added some dish liquid to it. “Please don’t crash your car.”  
_“We will see,”_ the man muttered before he honked and cursed (not too quietly) again. For the sake of his healthy ears, Minseok decided to put him on speaker and placed the phone on the counter to his left so that he could at least clean up while he listened to Kyungsoo’s raged rantings.  
_“Oh, so now you have found the accelerator pedal? I bet your mother is very proud of you! God damn it, just go, not everybody has as much some time as you! Perhaps you would be quicker if you got out and carried your car!”_  
“Kyungsoo,” Minseok said softly when it became too much for him, “as much as I love to hear your sweet voice, is there anything else you want to tell or ask me? Because I can’t stand being yelled at today at all.”

There were some seconds of a deafening silence after his words, only the white noise of the street were audible through the speaker. He knew that the younger man was most likely scolding himself for being insensitive and letting himself be distracted that easily, especially when he was so sure that Minseok was still on the verge of breaking down again.  
_“I’m sorry,”_ Kyungsoo said after a while, sounding a lot more honest than he had before. _“I didn’t think a-“_  
“Stop it,” he interrupted and shook his head, even though they could not see each other, while throwing a sponge into the hot water – maybe a bit too forcefully, judging by the way some droplets splashed through the small kitchen, one landing on his cheek. He wiped it away vigorously, rubbing the sleeve of his pullover over the skin of his face until it was sensitive and hurt a bit. “Let’s not talk about it. You have work to do and I have to cook, so if there is nothing else, I think we can hang up, right?”  
_“Minseok, I didn’t-“_  
“Thanks for checking on me, Kyungsoo,” he interrupted and reached over for his phone, “I’ll talk to you later.”

Minseok tapped on the red icon that ended the call without waiting for an answer before he almost threw the phone onto the counter again. He didn’t even know why he was getting angry in a moment like this without even having a proper reason. Kyungsoo was a wonderful friend who just tried to make sure he was alright after everything that had happened and would inevitably happen. There was just one major part of him that didn’t want to be treated differently just because he had told him his biggest issue, his only problem at the moment – he just didn’t want to be pitied or treated like a porcelain doll.

Sliding both hands through his hair, Minseok closed his eyes with a pained expression plastered on his face, sighing when he asked himself how he could just cut one of his best friends off like this just because the man was trying to take care of him. He confused himself so much, it gave him a headache. He considered calling him back to apologize for his behavior, telling him that he appreciated everything he had done in the last 24 hours, thanking him for this but there was a small detail that held Minseok back, something that kept him from picking up the phone to do just that. It was like an invisible rope was kinked around his wrist and made sure his hand didn’t reach out for the electronic device, so he let it be for that moment. Until he had gathered the courage to apologize, Minseok would be fine with the guilt in the pit of his stomach while he prepared dinner for Jongdae and himself.

 

It was 06:42pm when his best friend finally showed up. After he had cooked and sat down on of the chairs in the kitchen in front of the fully set table, waiting for the younger man for about half an hour, he had put the food into the stove at low heat to keep it warm for now before he had walked to the living room to lie down on the sofa and maybe read a bit. Almost right after his back had hit the cushions, his eyes had involuntary shut. Everything – starting out from the physical effort he had put up in the morning, over the emotional storm which was still raging in his head, to the incident with Kyungsoo – had drained him enough to leave the last days behind, pulling him under the surface of a world where nothing was able to harm him, where dreams felt like reality and made him smile even though he felt like crying most of the times.

Sleeping had always been one of the best possibilities to get this mind to shut up (that was if his body and brain let him drift off) without drinking alcohol to numb the poisonous thoughts running through his mind. He was able to live the life he wanted in an alternative world where everything he had ever wanted was with him – a world where Mihyun and Jongdae had never met, where Jongdae didn’t even think about proposing to somebody else than him, a world where Minseok was the one his best friend loved with all of his heart. A world so much better than the one he was living in.

Minseok didn’t hear it when somebody knocked on the door, he didn’t hear when Jongdae stepped in and he didn’t hear the man calling out his name. Jongdae quickly got rid of his shoes and left his coat on before he hurried through the hallway, looking into every room on his way to find his best friend. When he finally spotted him lying on the couch in uncomfortable black skinny jeans and a dark blue pullover with one arm dangling from the sofa, fingertips almost grazing the wooden floor, lips slightly parted with the soft and deep breathes he took in and let out, a fond smile made its way onto Jongdae’s face. He put off his jacked and laid it over the backrest of the armchair next to the sofa.  
Now that he was here, it smelled like ddeokbokki everywhere. His grin got even wider when he realized that the smaller man had made his favorite (because Minseok’s cooking skills were almost on Kyungsoo’s level and that definitely meant something!) which made his day even better than it already had been.

Deciding to not wake the peacefully sleeping man since he looked like he could need it - Minseok usually never slept during the day because he said it made his nights restless - Jongdae just skidded over to him as soundless as he could before he kneeled down next to the slightly smaller man, reaching out to brush a single strand of hair away from his forehead. Even though Minseok looked so innocent and carefree, the almost burning skin under his fingers and the circles under his closed eyes told him an entirely different story, making Jongdae frown when he thought back and tried to remember if his best friend had seemed troubled the day before. He cautiously placed his palm on the sleeping man’s forehead and apprehensively asserted that he really had a fever.

Minseok stirred under his touch and unintentionally skidded a bit closer into the direction of the human next to him, snuggling further into his best friend’s hand when Jongdae laid it on the man’s cheek, cupping the side of the older man’s face tenderly.  
“What have you been doing?” he whispered almost silently, “You are not sick, are you? You would have told me, right?”  
As expected, he didn’t get any answer, so he just continued to examine Minseok’s face, searching for any other traces that would give any evidence that the man was not feeling well. The lids of his eyes seemed to be swollen a bit and his lips looked like he had been biting down on them too hard the past hours, combined with the slightly reddened skin that was caused by the too high body temperature.

Jongdae’s thumb traveled over Minseok’s cheekbone a few times while he was lost in his own head worrying about his best friend before he pulled back with his own eyebrows still hunched together. Perhaps they would have been better off with chicken noddle soup that evening. It would at least help the older man to regain his health faster than ddeokbokki.

Once the comforting warmth of the younger man’s skin against his was suddenly gone, Minseok’s eyes fluttered open slowly, blinking against the light that radiated from the too bright lamp on the ceiling right above his head.  
“Hey there,” Jongdae muttered quietly, still kneeling next to the couch, and skidded in a bit closer to get a better look at him, “How are you feeling?”  
“My head hurts,” he mumbled and shut his eyes again, squeezing them together when the light added to the stinging sensation under his scalp.  
“I’ve guessed that much, you are slightly feverish.” Jongdae leaned over him a bit, resting the back of his hand against his best friend’s forehead again. “It’s not too high yet but you should probably still take something.”  
An almost invisible blush spread over his cheeks but the younger man didn’t seem to notice it for now when he stood up and crossed his arms in front of his chest while looking down at Minseok.

“I’m sorry for being late, Mihyun-“  
“It’s alright,” he cut him off and brushed it off with a movement of his hand. “You are here now, that’s all that matters.”  
A short silence settled in between them while the older of the two men sat up slowly, carefully to not get dizzy when he straightened his back and rubbed both hands over his face, trying to ignore the throbbing pain inside his head when he did so while Jongdae watched him in concern, already considering whether he had the time to run to one near shop for some medicine because he knew for sure that Minseok didn’t have anything since the older man didn’t really get sick at all.

“I know what you are thinking, forget it, I’m fine,” he interrupted his best friend’s thoughts and reached out to poke his side before he stood up. The fabric felt so warm under the tip of his finger.  
“Am I that predictable?” Jongdae asked and placed one hand on his chest in mock hurt, grinning slightly when Minseok rolled his eyes at the action and told him to cut the act before he had to throw up.  
“Oh, come on, you love it,” he teased and reached out for the older man to pull him into a tight hug.

Minseok didn’t respond but instead hesitantly hugged him back, his arms carefully sneaking around Jongdae’s waist before he wrapped them around him completely and pressed him close against his own frame, praying to all gods that perhaps could exist that the younger wasn’t able to feel or hear his heavily pounding heart – a small part of it had cracked at his words. Yes, he thought, you don’t know how much I do. Deciding that it wasn’t worth it to say it out loud, he just hid his face in the crook Jongdae’s neck and breathed in the scent he had come to love above all else. It provided so much warmness, such a homey feeling being in a position like this, it felt almost unreal.

 

“I’m happy for you,” he whispered instead, not trusting his voice to be stable enough to speak out loud when every single cell in his body screamed in protest as he muttered these syllables. They felt so damn wrong slipping past his lips, it caused him physical pain. “You will be an even greater couple when you are married.”  
Jongdae snorted and pulled back shortly to look at the smaller man with raised eyebrows and a challenging smirk on his lips, both of his palms resting on Minseok’s shoulders. “You’ve got to be kidding me, we already are perfect.”

What a way to get your heart broken, Minseok thought as he let go off him maybe a bit too quickly, his arms pulling back in a flinch as if he had been burned by Jongdae’s body. Feelings had always been overrated, too complicated to be understood and unnecessary in his opinion, yet they were there at every hour, minute, second of the day even if one forgot about that sometimes. If there really was a god watching over the world, Minseok was sure he would be forced into hell once he died because he didn’t think he could hold himself back in front of a being who willingly let people go through such a torture he felt. So what if he had to suffer in the afterlife? Then he could at least scream and curse at god as much as he wanted.

He quickly covered the action with a forced smile, while he nodded in agreement before he let his eyes cast downwards, the lashes shielding him from his friend’s prying look – hiding, like he had done it countless times before through his whole life, mostly in front of Jongdae to not give himself away.  
“Of course,” he said and turned away from him a bit, “How could I ever think anything else.”  
Not noticing the change in his best friend’s voice or behavior, Jongdae laughed quietly before he let one hand slide down Minseok’s arm to get a hold of his wrist.  
“Why don’t we eat something if you don’t want to take some medicine? You can use the energy,” he suggested and cocked his head a bit when Minseok looked up innocently.  
“Okay, I guess,” he said, glad about the change of topic and shrugged before he pried Jongdae’s fingers off and took a step back – safety distance to calm his aching heart at least a bit.

 

The kitchen was incredibly warm due to the stove heating it up since some time ago, another wave of the high temperature hitting them when Minseok took the pot out of it while Jongdae snatched their bowls from the table and carried them over to him.  
“How about we go to the living room and eat there? I feel like I’m melting in here!” he said as he placed them on the counter next to Minseok’s phone.  
The older man smiled softly as he put the pot down before taking off the lid and resting it into the sink, taking a big spoon out of one of the push trays for them to get the noodles out of the pan properly – chopsticks were already laying on the table.  
“Only if you don’t make a mess, I cleaned up yesterday before you came here.”

Since ‘eating in the living room while watching TV’ was something Jongdae usually had only done on special occasions when he was a kid, the man was still as exciting as he was back then when he all but flew out of the kitchen with his bowl and eating utensils in both hands, leaving behind Minseok who was shaking his head while grinning at the child-like full grown man before he took his own food and followed the overly joyous puppy.

“Which movie do you want to watch?” Jongdae asked from his position on the couch as soon as he spotted him setting foot into the room. “I was think about a comedy maybe?”  
Even though he wasn’t really in the mood for anything like this, Minseok nodded in agreement. Who was he to deny him something like this only because of one of his moods?  
“You know where the movies are,” he said and smiled slightly, “choose one.”

Jumping up, Jongdae almost slipped on the smooth floor due to his too fast steps, making Minseok almost throw away the bowl he had held in his hands because he reached out to catch him from falling. Luckily for both of them, the younger man was quick enough to regain his balance before he landed face-first to Minseok’s feet, laughing in embarrassment when he did so with both arms stretched out as some kind of buffer.  
“I’m fine, I’ve got myself!” he yelled one he stood on his feet relatively save again and then slowly walked over to the shelf over Minseok’s TV to pick up a DVD. The older man placed the bowl on the table in front of him and let out a sigh. He didn’t feel like eating at all. There was definitely something wrong with him – he fell asleep during the day, he felt grossed out by food he usually could eat loads of, he was kind of sick… all this didn’t sound like him at all.

He quickly got snapped back into reality when Jongdae skidded over to him after he had put in the movie and came to sit next to him again. They sat close enough that their knees were slightly touching when the younger man leaned forward a bit to take the remote. Minseok shifted a bit to the side, propping himself up on one elbow on the armrest to his right before he laid his head in his palm with a suppressed sigh.  
“Before we start,” Jongdae began carefully, and so slowly it seemed like the topic he was about to address was more complicated than the bomb he had dropped on Minseok the day before, as he fidgeted a bit on the cushion, eyes fixed on his fingers that laid in his lap, “there is something I wanted to ask you.”

Everything wasn’t fine at all. Nobody likes the typical conversations which start with ‘We need to talk’, ‘I need to ask you something’ or ‘There is something I have to talk about with you’ because it just gives you a rush of panic through your whole body while you try to find out what you did wrong. The answer for Minseok was obvious and he was just about to stand up and dig his own grave when Jongdae continued to talk.  
“I know that you probably already expected this and all but I just wanted to know if you would do me the honor of being my best man.”

If Minseok had been confused before, he was totally puzzled by his own thoughts and feelings by now. He was, of course, proud that Jongdae would think of him at first and even considered him as chief assistant for the most important day of his life but on the other hand there was a big part of him that began to scream. You haven’t caused me enough pain until now, right? Why don’t you just kill me already? It would be so much easier than shattering me a bit more every day. He looked down at his own hands with thoughts running wild inside his head which was definitely about to burst. How could he say no to that question? How could he say yes?

“I… I know that you think we are rushing everything and that we are not ready for this yet, but I would really like you instead of anybody else for this role even if you are not very fond of the idea of us marrying already,” Jongdae interrupted the rampage that was going on inside his mind.  
“It’s not that! I am incredibly happy for you, believe me but I… I…” Minseok looked around the room, his eyes never focusing on anything as if he was trying to find the right words or answers written across one of the walls. “I’m just not very good with people at the moment,” he finally whispered, gaze casting downwards to purposely avoid the younger man’s look. He technically wasn’t lying.  
“Your social anxiety is not coming back is it?” Jongdae asked in an equally quiet register. Instantly raising his head with eyes blown wide, Minseok held up his hands in defense.  
“No, no, no! It’s not like that, I am just… I’m quite unsteady at the moment, nothing you would have to worry about.”

The younger man sighed and placed his bowl next to his best friend’s on the table. It was not like this was obvious or anything.  
“But I do. You are not yourself at the moment, I can see that, you know?”  
A wave of guilt washed over Minseok as he pressed his body a bit closer to the armrest, trying to put some more distance between them since the man made it slightly hard for him to breathe normally.  
“What do you want me to say?”  
“You could tell me what’s wrong,” he suggested with a shrug and looked over at the smaller man with concern clouding his eyes. He knew better than to force him into saying anything he didn’t want to tell, he knew better than to skid closer and pull him into his arms even though that was all he wanted to do at the moment but he also knew better than to stay if Minseok refused to answer. They had been through this so many times before already, they had slowly reached their breaking point.

“I can’t,” he forced out, his voice sounding so strangled and almost broken, it nearly crushed Jongdae’s heart. The sound itself had made Minseok flinch, too. It wasn’t even like he had intended to say it – he actually had thought about lying again, about smiling and telling him that everything was fine, that he didn’t know what Jongdae meant when he said stuff like this, but Minseok just knew that his acting skills weren’t that good – especially not when it came to his best friend.

Jongdae nodded slowly and sighed before he let his head fall back a bit, “I thought we were past that stage. I thought you finally trust me enough to know that you can talk to me about each and every topic that bothers you.”  
“I do!” he quickly assured him and skidded a bit closer, reaching out for the arm of his best friend. If it was physical contact what would give him the evidence that Minseok really meant it, he would screw his own feelings and touch him even though every nerve inside him screamed in protest as he did so. Another crack shot through his heart when Jongdae pulled back and stood up.  
“Not enough, it seems.”

Panic arose inside of his chest and almost made it burst with the tension that always came with it. The world slowly crumbled around Minseok.  
“I will be your best man,” he said in a shaky voice with tears pooling in the corners of his eyes, threating to spill any second soon if Jongdae dared to take another step. He cursed himself for being this weak inside his head, even more so when his best friend turned around to look at him with a surprise expression.  
“I will be your best man but please,” it came out in a broken snivel, “please don’t leave me.”

The younger man was clutching him to his chest in a split second, pressing the trembling body close to his own when he whispered the man’s name.  
“Please,” Minseok was positively crying again, “Don’t leave me. Not you out of everybody. Please...don’t.”  
“I won’t go,” Jongdae assured him quietly, squeezing his own eyes together as they began to water at the sight of his best friend like this, even more so when he realized that his state was his own fault, “I’m sorry for even thinking about it, I’m so sorry, I won’t ever leave you. You don’t have to be my best man, it’s okay. I won’t go. Not after everything you have been through – after what we have been through. We will get through this together too, just as always.”

_I don’t believe you._

Minseok just wrapped his own arms around Jongdae, clinging onto his lifeline so desperately tight, he was probably hurting the younger man but neither he had the heart to complain when the older guy was crying into the side of his neck so hard although he hated to show weakness in front of others, nor had Minseok the strength to pull away and face the pain alone. There still was a small part of him that wanted to push Jongdae away, that wanted to be curled into a little ball in one corner of the room without anybody seeing him. It was a leftover of his time as an outcast, of all the years he had spent alone in high school – the time before he knew the name of the man in his arms. The part that still thought a life at the sidelines was safer than taking part in the action.

It were moments like this in which he regretted saying yes to Mr. Park all that years ago. If he hadn’t played the role back then, he wouldn’t have met Jongdae, they would have never been that close, Minseok would have never fallen in love with him. Perhaps his heart wouldn’t be so broken it could be considered shattered by then.

A small kiss was placed to the top of his head, what caused a wave of calmness to flow through his body.  
“You don’t have to do this alone,” Jongdae whispered one more time before he pulled back and searched for the man’s unfocused gaze. He placed one hand on his cheek and wiped away the strains of the tears, that hadn’t been soaked up by his pullover already, with his thumb. Minseok was glad that his face was already flushed and blotchy because of all the crying. “I am here.”  
“Thank you,” he mumbled with a raspy voice before he laid his head on Jongdae’s shoulder again, trying to forget the picture of the younger man in tears.

The comforting warmth that spread from his best friend’s body together with his scent was consoling enough to almost make him believe that Jongdae knew about his feelings but didn’t think any less of him because of them. When he held him like this, placing kisses on the top of his head from time to time while he trailed his hands over Minseok’s shoulders and back, he could almost pretend that everything was alright. Almost if there wasn’t that throbbing pain inside his chest and head.

“Minseok?”  
The man only hummed in response and snuggled a bit closer to the body pressed against him.  
“You are almost burning me, can I please at least give you some painkillers if you won’t take anything else?” he asked quietly when he felt Minseok’s forehead against the side of his neck. A sigh was the only answer he got before the man nodded almost impalpably.  
“Okay,” he said and pulled back involuntary, his hands lingering on Jongdae’s waist a bit longer than it would be normal or appropriate, but the younger man didn’t seem to mind when his own were still resting on Minseok’s upper arms while he tried to grin at his best friend somewhat reassuringly. His own heart ached as he saw the aftermaths of his breakdown (which probably wasn’t the first today, Jongdae asserted when he thought back to what the man looked like when he had been asleep).

“Do you have some?”  
“In the bathroom, I’ll go and-“  
“No, you won’t,” Jongdae cut him off and shook his head quickly, “you need to eat something first, I wouldn’t want you to feel nauseous because of taking them without any food in your stomach. I’ll look for them and you can eat in the meantime.”  
An involuntary smile made its way onto Minseok’s lips at the caring side the man was showing. He would be a great husband – that was for sure.

 

Later, when a few hours had passed and a movie was playing in the background, Minseok had fallen asleep on the couch, unintentionally huddled into his best friend’s side with one of his arms wrapped protectively around him.  
Jongdae had forced him to take the medicine with a glass full of water to rehydrate his body after the older of the two had quietly admitted that he hadn’t drank that much today even though he had done a lot of sports before Jongdae had picked up a fluffy, blood-red blanket in which he had swathed Minseok’s whole body so that only his face was visible. Then he had fed the older man a bit more of the delicious food before he had started to eat while Minseok had laughed at the faces he had made only to see his best friend’s smile instead of his tears for once that evening. They hadn’t spoken about what had just happened again and that was alright for the moment.

Now Jongdae was silently chuckling to himself whenever a funny scene came on, checking on the man snuggled into his side every other minute to see if he had woken up, yet. He looked exhausted even in his passed out state, he wondered what would cause him so much pain that it was even visible when there should be no worries invading his brain at all.  
A vibration against his thigh made him jump slightly (what made him check on Minseok once more) before Jongdae reached inside it and pulled out his phone, accepting the call that was shown on the screen.

 _“Hey, sweetheart.”_ An all too known voice said softly.  
“Hey, Mi,” he whispered back, still watching the man next to him in order to keep sure that he wasn’t loud enough to wake him up, “Sorry, I can’t talk right now.”  
_“Oh, okay. I just wanted to know when you’ll be home tonight.”_  
Biting down on his own lower lip, Jongdae thought about it for a moment before he decided for the only option that was acceptable for himself.  
“I will be home by tomorrow morning.”  
_“What? Did anything happen?”_ There was something in her tone that Jongdae strongly disliked at the moment. There was no worry or interest audible at all.  
“He just needs me.”  
_“Well, I need you too, you know? I had a surprise for you.”_ She sounded almost accusing at the first sentence but it melted into something that probably should be seductive at the second part.

Jongdae sighed and dropped his head a bit, not wanting to hurt her or piss her off, but there was no way in hell he would go away from the small man. He had made a promise.  
“I think that can wait until tomorrow, right? I can’t and won’t leave him like this.”  
There were some seconds of silence until she spoke up again.  
_“Alright. See you then.”_

She hung up before waiting for Jongdae’s answer. He shook his head after staring at the dark screen a bit before he dropped the phone on the couch next to him and fixed his gaze on Minseok again. His eyes moved slightly under the closed lids and he sometimes twitched a bit as if there was anything scaring him in his dreams from time to time.

Rubbing the hand that rested on top of the blanket over his waist, he pressed another chaste kiss to the top of his dark hair and whispered, “I’m here.” into the strands. As if Minseok had just waited for these words, the man snuggled his head further into the chest of his best friend and relaxed quite a lot more. Jongdae smiled fondly at him and then went back to watching TV until his own eyes were getting droopier with every passing minute. It didn’t take long for him to be completely clocked out too – the movie still playing in the background with Jongdae’s arm around his best friend to shield him from all fears and worries that could threaten him, not knowing that he was the only cause for his pain.


	5. Diaphanously Yellow

When the first rays of sunshine fell through the window to their left and hit Minseok’s face, the small man slowly became aware that he was conscious again. Judging by that it must have been at least eight o’clock in the morning, what meant that the older man would unavoidably be late for his class this day. It was not like he cared about that, Minseok had already decided that he wouldn’t go to university at all this week again, yesterday, knowing that he wouldn’t be able to concentrate even if he tried.   
Letting his eyelids flutter open, the groan which had almost slipped past his lips got stuck in his throat. Jongdae was still next to (or rather under) him, his chin resting on Minseok’s head with both of his arms wrapped around the smaller man’s body while he snored quietly as if he cared about nothing in the world at all. 

Seeing that Minseok was still shivering slightly although he was buried under the fluffy blanket, huddled against his best friend’s side, his fever was still there somewhat. Perhaps he should just take the medicine Jongdae had suggested yesterday even if his stomach was already churning when he just thought about it. To fix his focus on anything else than this, he tried to pull the blanket around him a bit tighter without waking Jongdae in moving too much in process. His feet were exposed to the too cold air around them, making his toes turn into small ice cubes. For a moment he wondered how Jongdae could sleep through the whole night without getting at least blue lips since the younger man just wore a thin long-sleeved shirt and had slept with no duvet or anything – there was just Minseok to keep him warm and he was not even on top of him completely. Instead, he had his head on his friend’s chest, his knees bend so that they were only slightly laying over Jongdae’s thighs and his blanket-covered frame against the right side of his abdomen.   
For a short moment, Minseok wondered whether the man was used to this because Mihyun stole his cover during the night since he had heard Jongdae complaining about it more than just a few times. Perhaps this had hardened him against the cold of the night when it was necessary to keep somebody else than himself warm. Minseok suddenly felt bad and tried to free his own limbs so that he could drab the blanket over the man’s legs if not over the rest of his body, too. He himself could live without it anyway if it was for the sake of somebody else’s comfort. 

“Minseok?” a, from sleep slightly rough, voice made him stop dead in his movement while the weight on top of his head was lifted. Even his scalp felt cold now. “What are you doing?”  
“I-I just wanted to… y-you know, I…” he took a deep breath before he spoke up again, finally without stuttering this time, “You must be cold, aren’t you?”  
Minseok still didn’t dare to lift his head and meet the younger man’s gaze – it would have made the situation awkward and the smaller guy felt far too comfortable to just give up the position they were in. There weren’t enough times when they were cuddled together like this, he had to drag this moments out for as long as he could.   
Somehow along his thoughts, he started to chasten himself for feeling like this again. This was his best friend and nobody else. He shouldn’t enjoy their current position as much as he did, especially not since exactly this guy was engaged to the girl he had been together with for years now. 

A soft chuckle answered his question while Jongdae tenderly rubbed one hand over his friend’s arm and harshly pulled him back into reality. Although his skin hurt seemingly everywhere, Minseok let him without uttering a single word of protest. To hell with logical thinking.   
“Seeing that you are burning at the moment, I’m more hot than anything.”  
Damn straight you are.   
“Am I,” Minseok mumbled and weakly wiggled one arm out of the blanket to touch his own forehead and feel whether Jongdae was overreacting since he always tended to do that whenever his best friend showed the slightest sign of having caught a cold. The unusual heat which greeted his palm almost made Minseok flinch while a wince escaped his lips when the ache in seemingly every muscle he used shot through his body.   
Jongdae wanted to pull the man tighter against himself but he instead just stopped the movement of his hand over the blanket, scared to cause Minseok more pain than he already felt. Knowing his best friend, he wouldn’t say anything even if his touch felt like hell on earth to the smaller man.   
“Where does it hurt?” he asked quietly and casted his eyes down, his gaze meeting Minseok’s raven-black hair since the older guy still refused to show his face.   
“I could tell you that but I think I would have to say less if just told you where it doesn’t hurt,” Minseok responded and sighed while he retreated his hand under the blanket again, goosebumps appearing on his skin when his cold fingers came in contact with his other arm that was not covered by his sweater. 

“And you are still freezing,” Jongdae asserted with a stern voice, his eyebrows hunching as he still tried to get a proper look at the older man’s face. Sadly, Minseok still didn’t budge but instead shrugged against his friend’s body.   
“It’s alright, I will be warm soon again.”  
Thinking for some seconds without answering, Jongdae unconsciously began to stroke Minseok’s arm gingerly again, lost in his own head as he tried to find the right words to say.   
“I will get you some medicine, there is no need to discuss this. In the meantime, you will eat something and take bath, okay? Then you’ll feel better than now. I will come back and help you if you need me for anything,” he said after some time and carefully pushed the older man away, their eyes finally meeting in process. 

If Minseok had looked tired the day before, he looked incredibly exhausted by then. His cheeks showed some wrinkles of where his face had been pressed against Jongdae’s collar, his eyes were still swollen – nothing unusual if you thought back to how hard he was crying the last evening – and slightly red, circles under them deeper than they had been and his whole face was tinted in a soft blush that normally wasn’t there. The color built a stark contrast against the pale expanse of his throat and neck that wasn’t hidden by his clothes or the blanket which was still wrapped around the small body tightly because of the way Minseok dragged it around his frame to get rid of the nervousness somehow. It is just Jongdae, he tried to tell himself but that was the problem. It wasn’t like he wanted his heart to not follow his will, to go for his best friend, and he certainly didn’t want it to beat out of his chest only because of the fond way the younger man was looking at him.

Jongdae’s heart clenched painfully as he held out against the exhausted gaze Minseok threw him. He absolutely didn’t deserve this at all. If he kept looking like that, Jongdae was sure that he would pull him against his chest again and rock him like a baby until he fell asleep to fight the cold under which he suffered without feeling any pain and if that meant that he would also have to jump up to get him some medicine that would knock him out and do that job for him, so be it. 

“Are you feeling nauseous?”  
The man shook his head slightly, their eye contact not breaking the whole time.   
“Headache?”  
A small nod.   
“Dizzy?”  
“Just a bit,” he muttered quietly and blinked when he was reminded of how blurry his view actually was. This was definitely not good and totally the reason why Minseok didn’t get sick easily. If he actually did, he tried to ignore it as long as he could, refusing to accept that there was something wrong with him until he couldn’t push it away any longer.  
“Does your stomach hurt?”  
“Only because of sore muscles but other than that it’s fine,” he answered quietly and finally adverted his eyes, his look falling onto the phone that laid on the couch next to his best friend. A small pit of worry started to form inside his chest when he spotted it, paired with the picture of his own phone that slowly showed up in front of him, the message Jongdae had sent him two nights before plastered to the front of his brain. Perhaps he felt a bit nauseous. 

“Doesn’t… doesn’t Mihyun miss you?” he asked and pointed into the direction of the electronic device with his chin. Jongdae followed his gaze and then sighed when he spotted what the man was meaning, turning his head to look at Minseok again with a small shrug.   
“She called yesterday but you were already asleep and I-I promised not to leave you so I told her and stayed. It was fine with her, she understands.” At least the first sentence wasn’t a lie.   
Nodding slowly, because he really didn’t know what to say, Minseok skidded a bit back – away from the man – before he struggled to stand up, almost stumbling when his legs felt so wobbly under him, he really wondered how they had not given out already.   
“Hey, careful!” Jongdae exclaimed and was on in his feet in a split second, one hand on Minseok’s back to keep him steady while the fingers of the other one were tenderly closed around the older man’s wrist. Like hell he would just sit next to his best friend breaking down because of how sick he was. “I know that you are trying to change the topic but that won’t work.”  
Minseok sighed and hung his head, cursing himself for feeling this weak beneath Jongdae’s caring fingertips on his body that somehow managed to make him feel all tingly inside.   
“No chance of keeping you from forcing me to take medicine?”  
The younger man shook his head with a small smile on his lips. “Definitely not.”

After he had eaten a piece of toast with a lot of protest since he didn’t feel like eating anything (swallowing felt like he was trying to force a rock or something down his throat. Everything hurt!) but Jongdae had insisted until Minseok had given in, taking one slice without putting butter or anything else on it. Then he was gingerly manhandled into the bathroom where Jongdae had left him for until he was back from buying drugs with the instruction to take a shower or bath – whatever he preferred. So Minseok did, only for the sake of his best friend. 

The word ‘whipped’ ghosted around his mind when he shed his clothes bit by bit before he folded them and put them on top of the washing machine, the hot water filling the bathtub in the meantime. He had added one of the essences Kyungsoo had given him as a birthday gift that year, the soap making bubbles and masses of foam appear on the surface of the liquid that was bright orange at first but faded into a kind of diaphanous yellow after some time. A sweet, rich smell of vanilla flared up in the room quickly, it was almost too much for Minseok but there still was a small smile on his lips when he thought that Jongdae, who was currently most likely running through the snow covered city to find a drugstore that was already opened to get some medicine for him, very much loved stuff like this, so this had to do. The younger man even had stayed over at Minseok’s house one day after his engagement, leaving his fiancé alone to stay with his best friend and most importantly - he had kept his promise. He could go through something trivial as a strong, too sweet smell if that meant that he made Jongdae happy. 

When the tub was eventually filled enough, Minseok got rid of his underwear and stepped into the hot water, sitting down with a low hiss when his skin adapted to the temperature before he leaned back and rested his head against the edge of the white bath. His eyes fluttered close on their own while he was basically able to feel all muscles relaxing in the hotness that surrounded his body, finally feeling warm again. He knew that taking a bath while being sick was not the cleverest thing to do since it drained a lot of energy out of one’s body that would originally needed for overcoming the cold or flu one was fighting, but technically he wasn’t even sick (at least not physically, he tried to make himself believe) so he just pushed the thought aside and focused on removing all of the tensions that had burdened him until that moment.   
Minseok didn’t know how much time had flown by when he heard a door being opened since he had unintentionally been dozing off.   
A quiet “Minseok?” was called when somebody knocked on the door of his bathroom quietly.   
“Yeah?” he croaked back and quickly made sure that he was completely covered in the soft foam, just in case his friend wanted to come inside. Of course, Jongdae had seen him in his underwear but only if they changed in front of each other and it wasn’t like the younger man would need to see his private parts. At least not under this circumstances.  
The door was opened carefully, almost like Jongdae was prepared to slam it shut again as soon as Minseok declared that ‘yeah’ didn’t mean ‘come in’ or anything like it. But nothing happened, so he looked through the small gap he had caused and then stepped in once he was sure that it was okay. The sight of his best friend under a small mountain of foam, which only showed his head and a small part of his throat, made Jongdae smile softly, the fond expression not even wavering when he spotted how glassy Minseok’s eyes were, the cheeks tinted in a deep shade of red, due to slight embarrassment, being feverish or the hot water he was seated in.  
He held up a white plastic bag with the sign of the drugstore down the road on it once he was finished with his observation.   
“I’m sorry it took me that long, there was a line of old women who were all chatting with the pharmacist who was – surprise – also an old woman!”  
Minseok chuckled quietly and just shook his head, “It’s alright, really. I already told you that you didn’t even need to do this at all, I’ll still live if I don’t take anything.”  
“I don’t care, as long as I am around, I will make sure that you will be better as soon as possible even if that means I have to force drugs into you.”  
Sighing in defeat, Minseok just let him be for the moment and settled for a small ‘thank you anyway’ which was just brushed off by Jongdae who then disappeared for a few minutes (Minseok was actually able breathe during that time) until he came back with a new set of clothes but without the medicine. 

“I figured you could use something else since you slept the whole night in the clothes you had on yesterday, skinny jeans at that, I wonder how the blood circulation in your legs was still functioning and if you have a fever, you must have been sweating and-“ he cut himself off and took a deep breath, shaking his head before he dropped the garments on the near counter and then sat down next to the bathtub. “Sorry, I’m rambling, right? I’m just worried about you...”  
“You don’t have to be, really. I will be fine. You don’t have to stay here, only because you worry, if you feel uncomfortable,” Minseok said in a quiet register while he studied the back of his friend’s head. His hairstyle reminded him of the first time they had met – the dark strands still didn’t seem to follow the man’s will at all, sticking out from his head in all directions, some strands in curls (especially behind his ears that were in a light pink). Minseok wondered if Mihyun had already nagged at Jongdae because of it. The older man had always liked it that way. 

“I don’t,” he assured him and leaned his head back against the edge of the bathtub too, staring at the white ceiling above their heads. “And I have to make sure you don’t fall unconscious and drown, so I will stay if that’s okay with you.”  
“Of course,” Minseok whispered even though he wasn’t really sure about that. He obviously liked it when Jongdae was near him and cared for him to such an extent, but this was a bit difficult when he was naked and not able to count on his brain to think rationally because of the fever. Everything would be fine as long as he didn’t say something too revealing or dumb, so he stayed silent, just like Jongdae did too at first. Only the quiet noise of the popping bubbles was heard while Minseok fought against the urge to raise one hand out of the water to smooth it through the man’s hair. It just looked too good, he actually couldn’t help it… at least not until his friend spoke up again.   
“Since Mi and her mom have already been planning the wedding for years now, she said that it would be possible for us to marry in spring already.”  
“Did she begin with it when you were still in high school or what?” Minseok mumbled and blew into the foam, making it fly in the direction of the door slightly, but the small bubbles didn’t make it over the edge of the bathtub.   
A soft chuckle was heard from beside him when Jongdae turned around to throw him an amused look. “That’s exactly what I asked, too, when she told me.”  
Smiling softly at the almost boyish-looking man, who looked like he was about to sprain his neck every second soon, Minseok actually held one hand out and swiped his wet forefinger over his cheek.   
“Good to know.”

His friend flinched away from his touch and sat up again while he quickly rubbed the skin with the sleeve of his pullover, furiously and loudly questioning why Minseok would do this to him if he was even nice enough to get out for medicine before he had even eaten anything. 

“I totally forgot that!” Minseok exclaimed in a raspy voice and sat up rather abruptly, the water splashing in waves against the white porcelain around him, “I’m a horrible Hyung, why haven’t I thought of that earlier. Jongdae, I won’t drown in the meantime, please go and eat something.”  
The younger man laughed and shook his head, “Calm down, Minnie, I’m fine without eating anything, I’m used to it anyway.”  
“That’s not the point,” Minseok argued and shook his head before he searched for his friend’s eyes again, “You forced me to eat and now I’m forcing you.”  
Jongdae crossed his arms in front of his chest with a challenging smirk on his lips as he looked down on the older man. “I would like to see you try.”

Knowing that Minseok would never dare to stand up without any clothes on, he sat back down next to his best friend and cocked his head to the side a bit, “I promise to eat something once you’re finished… and if you let me wash your hair.”  
Blinking in surprise, the man backed up a bit and reached up to card one hand through the black strands on top of his own head. “Why?”  
Jongdae shrugged and smiled softly again, “I haven’t done it in a long time but I actually liked it the last time I did.”  
Some moments, in which Minseok tried to remember that time when it had happened, passed by until a small smile of realization spread over his face. “I was drunk that time, wasn’t I?”  
Jongdae nodded in response, “You begged me to do it because you felt like your arms were too short to reach the top of your head properly.”

“Stop it!” he exclaimed and covered his ears with both hands in order to block out the embarrassing words that spilled from Jongdae’s lips, accompanied by his beautiful, loud laugh that reached Minseok even through his attempts to shield himself from any noises. In order to hear it properly, he let his arms sink again and watched his best friend who had his head tilted back a bit, with his lips parted but stretched in a wide grin, showing the two rows of bright, straight teeth.   
“But it was so cute how you panicked, not realizing that it was just the pullover you had worn which limited your movements. It was Kyungsoo’s, right?”  
Minseok nodded, remembering how bad he had felt when he woke up the next morning, wearing a top that wasn’t his but that was slightly ripped under the arms from when he had tried to take it off. Kyungsoo, of course, wasn’t mad or anything, he had just shook his head in mock disappointment and thrown it into the trash can, declaring that it had been even too small for him and that Minseok didn’t have to worry.   
“Anyway,” Jongdae tried to change the topic, “will you let me do it?”  
Minseok shrugged and skidded a bit back, his hands making sure that there was still foam covering his whole lower half to hold the embarrassment as humble as possible. Jongdae beamed and quickly skidded to the end of the tub, sitting down cross-legged behind Minseok who was already handing him the showerhead.   
Jongdae carefully turned it on and set it to a ginger level before he began to rinse his friend’s hair to get some of the oily water out of it already. Minseok couldn’t help but think that this was somewhat highly comfortable and even more relaxing than just waiting for the hot liquid to dissolve his body. The cherry on top of the sundae was when Jongdae began to hum a melody Minseok had heard him singing more than just a few times. Although it was a girl-group song, he managed to hit all the notes the right way, it didn’t matter whether they were way too high for a man.   
Once he was sure that it was alright, Jongdae reached over the older man to turn the shower off and take the shampoo that stood on the brim of the tub, popping it open and squeezing a bit of the clean soap onto his palm. Minseok’s whole body was a bit tense again when he felt his friend’s fingers carefully massaging his scalp in the process of cleaning his hair. He relaxed, however, not too much later and let his head drop back a bit to grant him better access with a quiet, soft moan escaping his lips. If he hadn’t been that focused on the way Jongdae’s fingertips moved, he wouldn’t have noticed the short falter, which lasted not longer than a heartbeat, in his small motions. 

“Do you do this to Mihyun sometimes?” Minseok asked in a low register as he let his eyes flutter close in order to concentrate on the only few inches where Jongdae touched him better.   
“No, I don’t,” he answered equally quiet and took a bit more of the shampoo since the short hairs right behind his temples looked like they could use some attention, too. “We usually don’t shower together or anything. Other than that, her hair is way too long for this, and it feels kind of strange. Yours is… like the perfect length.”  
“Perhaps she should cut it,” Minseok suggested, not intending for his friend to hear but he did anyway, chuckling at the tone the older man had used. 

Jongdae knew that the older man didn’t approve his choice of a fiancée and that was alright since he knew that Minseok had tried so many times to get on the girl’s friendly side but she somehow refused to see more than a stranger in him. During parties and regular get-togethers, be it with or without alcohol, he had tried to talk to her and get to know her since he knew how much it would mean to Jongdae if they were friends, too, but she had always refused, giving rude or no answers at all. Jongdae had asked her about it but never really knew the reason to why she acted like this because the only explanation he had gotten was, “I just don’t like him or the way he behaves around me. He is odd.”   
Jongdae didn’t understand her the slightest when she said stuff like this, but he let her be. It wasn’t like he could change anything about it after all of the times he had tried to coax her into talking to Minseok, to at least smile at him from afar – the girl just wouldn’t give in, he just made it worse in the end so he quickly learnt to just accept his fate that the woman he loved and the man he was so fond of wouldn’t get along. He just hoped they would be okay at the wedding. 

He took his hands back to himself for a short moment before he reached for the showerhead again to wash out all of the shampoo.   
“Close your eyes,” Jongdae said quietly and watched how Minseok executed his order to avoid that some of the foam encumbered his sight, the long lashes throwing shades onto his cheekbones. The red color was still there, even deeper now that the hot water had soaked his body completely, giving him an almost boyish imagine, making him look even younger than he already did.   
Jongdae took his sweet time washing the soap out of his hair, sliding his fingertips through the black strands a few times more than absolutely necessary and also after he was sure that there was nothing but water left that made the locks shimmer in the light that fell upon them. Still, his hands kept moving – slowly, gingerly, almost as if he tried to carefully wipe away all pain that could be hidden inside his best friend’s head.   
When he let his hand sink, the tips of his fingers lingered a bit on the man’s nape before he retreated them, purposely ignoring how the muscles under Minseok’s skin flexed a bit when he did this. 

“There you go,” he whispered before he stood up and smiled slightly, his gaze fixed on the ground rather than his eyes, “I’ll wait for you in the kitchen so that you can… dry and dress yourself, okay? Okay.”  
Minseok just stared after him, not knowing what this just was but deciding that he was better off with not thinking about it too much, he quickly shook his head and then reached to the bung next to his feet that kept the water from flowing out of the tub, pulling it up so that the diaphanously yellow liquid slowly disappeared.   
Stepping out of the tub, he grabbed the towel that hung on a hook on the door, wrapping himself in the fluffy fabric and just staying like this for a few moments before he actually dried himself. Every swipe of the cloth against his sensitive skin hurt a bit, the more the often he had to rub over it until it was even redder than it already was. Minseok was glad one he was finished and able to throw the towel away but the happiness was short-lived when his gaze fell on the clothes he had to put on. To his great joy, Jongdae had picked sweatpants that were a little too big as well as the softest pullover he owned, paired with comfortable boxer shorts and a thick pair of socks. Sometimes he overly loved the man.   
To keep the clothes as dry as possible, he ruffled his hair a bit, making some droplets splash onto the mirror, before he reached for a towel again to rubbing them down until he was satisfied with the way they felt. In order to make himself a little more presentable, Minseok picked up the hairbrush and combed them a few times (although his scalp didn’t like that… at all) while he examined his own appearance in the mirror. He really did look a bit more alive than before he had taken the bath, even if he felt like he was about to fall asleep. Perhaps he would look and feel close to normal again once he had taken the medicine. There was a strange tickling sensation growing behind his forehead.

The sweet smell of oranges hit his nose when he got closer to the kitchen, Jongdae’s quiet singing filling the air again. The younger man didn’t take notice of him at first, he was too focus on nodding his head along to the soft ballad that slipped from his lips while he prepared some fruits. Minseok didn’t know what demon had possessed him when he silently walked over to the man and wrapped his arms around the man’s waist, hiding his face in his neck. Strangely, Jongdae didn’t seem the slightest bit surprised, he continued to sing as if this was completely normal, only the tone of his voice changed – one was clearly able to hear him smile.   
“You okay?” the younger man asked once he was finished with his little song, still occupied with cutting the fruits in small, perfect-for-eating-them-right-away-pieces.   
“You smell good,” Minseok mumbled and tightened his hold on him a bit. Where did that come from? I didn’t intend to say that!   
“Don’t I always?” Jongdae chuckled, the grumble in his back when he did so vibrating against Minseok’s chest.   
“Of course,” he muttered and nuzzled against the soft skin. Abort mission! He tried to chasten himself but it was as if the connection between his brain and his body was no longer existent, he just snuggled closer to him instead of backing up. 

“I think your fever got worse,” Jongdae said as he tried to turn around but had to give up because of the vice grip Minseok held him in. A tender laugh arose from his throat while he petted the arms wrapped around his middle in order to sooth the older man a bit, not used to him being this affectionate or cuddly. Due to the social anxiety that he had suffered from a quite long time, Minseok was never really one to search comfort in skin ship with others, rather turning and running away once he felt bad instead of hugging others or asking for help to settle himself like Jongdae, for example, did. But he kind of liked it that Minseok was like this for once. His back felt warm and even if it would look slightly odd to outsiders, Jongdae actually would be content to stay in this position, if Minseok wasn’t sick. 

“Hey,” he said, his voice like he was speaking to a small child rather than a full grown man. “Does your head still hurt?”  
Jongdae felt Minseok nodding against his neck, the still slightly damp hair tickling his ear and the side of his throat.   
“Come on,” he tried to coax him into letting go – it wasn’t like he wanted him to. “You need to take your medicine if you want to feel better.”  
“Am already feelin’ good,” Minseok mumbled and shook his head a bit, as good as possible with it still pressed against his friend’s nape.   
“But you are hurting, right? Then you have to take something that will make the pain go away.”

Finally, to both of their distastes, Minseok took his hands back to himself, the fingertips grazing over his stomach and the sides of his waist before he retreated them completely, Jongdae turning around to look at him. The older man’s eyes were still glassy and slightly unfocused, his lips shimmered a bit, as well as the rest of his round face. What worried him most was the color of his skin – too red to be normal.   
“Do you still have your clinical thermometer somewhere?” he asked while he reached out to place his palm on his forehead to feel how hot it really was. The skin was almost burning.   
“In one of the cupboards,” he said and pointed at a row of them above Jongdae’s head.   
The younger man nodded and skidded over to it before he motioned for the white plastic bag that he had left on the table earlier.   
“You can already take your medicine, I just want to make sure that I don’t have to get you to a hospital.”  
“Jongdae, I’m not dying,” Minseok defended himself, close to ruining this statement when the world was tilted right in front of his eyes and he had to grab onto a chair to keep himself from falling down. His best friend was by his side in a split second.   
“What’s wrong?” he exclaimed and seized his upper arms, holding the man up as good as possible.   
“Everything’s spinning,” Minseok mumbled and closed his eyes shortly. It turned out to be the worst idea he had to come up with when it just aggravated the situation and made him nauseous on top of that. 

“Can you walk?” Jongdae asked him with a more than worried expression, one arm now wrapping around Minseok’s middle since he feared that the man was close to passing out.   
“I would rather not risk anything,” he forced out and bit down on the tip of his tongue, trying desperately to keep the toast he had eaten inside his stomach while he wished away the dizziness. It took him a few moments of taking calculated, deep breathes and words of encouragement – almost sweet nothings – from Jongdae to steady himself enough to straighten his spine again. Minseok wondered when he had doubled over.   
“Come on, you need to lay down,” Jongdae muttered and took a step away from the man, his hands still resting on his body, though. He slowly carried him more than that Minseok walked himself but it was alright for both of them since the older man’s legs felt far too wobbly to be trusted. 

They managed to get into the bedroom where Minseok reclined on the bed as soon as he could, a shiver hitting his whole body when the cold sheets came in contact with it. He cursed himself so much for being this weak and depended on somebody, especially since the one taking care of him was Jongdae.   
“Thank you,” Minseok all but whispered, already reaching down to pull the covers over his body but his best friend beat him to it, tugging the man in like one would do it with a toddler – it felt like that, anyway.  
“There’s no need,” Jongdae assured him and sat down on the edge of the bed. The wrinkles between his eyebrows from hunching them together all the time since yesterday were still there as he studied the sick guy. He hadn’t been this worried in a long time. “Do you want me to make you some tea or bring you water? Your body needs fluids.”  
A small nod made him rise in an instant.   
While Jongdae was out of the room, Minseok closed his eyes – glad that the world wasn’t spinning this time – and almost drifted off again. The fever threatened to pull him into unconsciousness but the pain inside his limbs and head prevented it, so that the man was just left alone, feeling like floating somewhere between sleep and reality.   
It caused him trouble to open his eyes again when Jongdae came back and persuaded him into drinking something in that soothing, quiet voice he usually never made use of. Minseok didn’t remember if he had taken the medicine after that, he couldn’t remember if he had bid him goodbye or told him that it was okay to go home to his fiancée again, he didn’t know whether the ‘I love you’ ghosting around his head were just his thoughts or actual words he had whispered. But when he thought back now, he was definitely sure that Jongdae stayed by his side until he was sure that Minseok had fallen asleep, leaning down and kissing his forehead tenderly before he muttered, “I’m still here.” and then there was nothing but a swirl of too bright colors, pulling him under the surface of insensibility in an ocean of coldness and numbness which surrounded him for the next couple of hours.


	6. Light Pink

The ocean threatened to drown him. Ice cold waves were crashing over his head, pushing him under the surface where everything was pitch black without a single hint of light and caused Minseok one panic attack after another. He felt that something unknown was reaching out for him, digging its claws as well as its teeth deep into his hurting skin, drawing blood more and more each time. The man struggled to get out of reach, he pushed and hit and kicked and screamed to get away from the demon he wasn’t even able to see – that wasn’t even there. His strength wavered but he kept fighting until his muscles eventually gave out and he was falling in the darkness with agony creeping up his body, taking advantage of his paralysis. 

Jongdae wasn’t fine at all, either. He helplessly watched how his best friend tossed and turned, grumbled and sometimes cried out in pain and fear due to the delirium he found himself trapped in, unable to escape for even a short moment. There was a thin layer of sweat covering the man’s body but the shivering still hadn’t stopped, so Jongdae continued to fix the duvet that covered Minseok from time to time whenever his movements made it slip from his frame.   
The younger man felt useless, scared and so freaking worried to a point where he knew that he would make himself sick like this, too – torn between feeling the need to call somebody, anybody, for help and staying right where he was because he feared that something would happen to his best friend during his short absence since both of their phones still laid in the kitchen. 

Knowing that this wasn’t an acceptable way to continue, Jongdae scrambled to get up (even though a small part of his brain was still protesting because “Are you fucking mad? You want to leave him like this?”) and hurried down the hallway until he reached the kitchen, his socks almost making him slip on the floor tiles but he thankfully caught himself before he grabbed Minseok’s phone as fast as he could to call the only person that could help him at the moment but whose number he didn’t have. Fortunately, his fingerprint was also able to unlock the electronic device so that he was able to call the younger man without even realizing how many messages there were or that the screen was cracked, he was too focused on getting inside the bedroom again.   
A sigh of relief escaped his lips when he saw that Minseok was still the way he had left him, the easement quickly fading, though, since he was still fighting against whatever it was that tortured him in his fever-filled dreams. He had almost forgotten the phone call if it wasn’t for a deep voice cutting through his thoughts. 

“Minseok? Listen, I’m sorry, I don’t know what I-“  
“Kyungsoo,” he cut him off and sat back down next to the bed, his free hand coming to rest on his friend’s upper arm, “It’s Jongdae.”  
“Why are you calling? Did something happen?” Even though there was a worried undertone in his words, he sounded too cold for Jongdae’s liking. He wondered what he had done wrong to upset so many people at once.   
“Minseok, he… We were sitting and he…” The man took a deep breath and closed his eyes for a short moment as he tried to make up his mind somehow. “He is running a high fever, has since yesterday evening but it has gotten worse during the last hour. I already forced him to eat at least a bit of toast before I gave him some medicine and something to drink but he was so… unlike himself before he fell asleep. He cuddled me when we were in the kitchen and refused to let go, after that he said that he was dizzy and not even able to stand up, let alone walk, on his own. I brought him to the bedroom and tugged him in and he fell asleep right away but he isn’t resting, he is so churning, always kicking and sometimes even screaming because of the delirium and I-“ His voice cracked as once again fear crept up inside of his chest. He felt so damn helpless.   
“I am so worried about him a-and I don’t know what to do,” Jongdae finally said, almost in an inaudible whisper.  
He didn’t know whether Kyungsoo had a problem with him or if it was something other than that, but Jongdae knew that the small guy would throw everything away and rush over to Minseok’s if that was what would help his not-blood-related brother.   
A huff was heard through the phone and there were some seconds of silence in which Jongdae was once again reminded of how bad his best friend felt when he let out a pained whimper and threw his head to the other side, his arm twitching under the younger man’s palm. 

“Okay, so this is what you are going to do,” Kyungsoo finally spoke up after some time, also having heard the pitiful noise. So much for ‘I’m not becoming sick easily, you out of all people should know that’. “Make sure he is under the blanket, his body needs to get rid of all bacteria or viruses, so his body needs to heat up to destroy them. Just make sure that it doesn’t climb over a temperature of 103 degrees, then you will have to get him to a hospital, okay?”  
There was a lump in his throat that needed to fade before Jongdae was able to speak again.   
“If it’s too high, take a towel and soak it in cold water before you place it on his skin - that will help to reduce the fever but stop immediately if he shivers, that could increase the temperature and make it worse than it already is.”  
The man opened his eyes again and asserted that Minseok wasn’t shivering anymore. Perhaps this could be seen as a good sign. He just hoped that Kyungsoo’s tips would help him because he was close to desperate by then. Bringing him to a hospital didn’t seem to be such a bad idea.  
“You said that you have already given him medicine and something to drink but he will need as much fluids as he can get so make sure that you try to wake him up from time to time and force him to drink. If he is not able to swallow properly, be careful that he doesn’t choke on it. Other than that you can’t do much if it’s a virus. Once he is conscious, you can take him to a doctor and see if it’s a bacterial infection, then they can give you antibiotics which will help him, got it?”

Although he couldn’t see him, Jongdae nodded, his gaze still not breaking away from the older man to his side. His fingers were still quivering under the blanket.   
“Thank you so much,” he said, his voice sounding a lot more secure than he actually felt like.   
“Listen, my parents called yesterday evening and asked me to come home because they have planned a surprise birthday party for my brother so I can’t come to you, Chanyeol and Baekhyun are at university and his family is too far away to just come to you. I’m sorry, Jongdae, you have to do this on your own.”

“I will try my best,” he forced out, his stomach dropping a bit at the thought of being alone again. But he would do this, he would be strong for Minseok and nurse him back to health as good as possible.   
“One last thing,” Kyungsoo said, “I will personally crane your neck if you dare to leave him like that. I don’t care that you are engaged now, I don’t care if she is waiting for you at home. Minseok is your top priority now until you are sure that he will be fine on his own.”  
“I wouldn’t dream of going and leaving him behind like this. Trust me when I say that I worry more about him than about what will happen once I go back home even if Mihyun will be fuming.”  
“You better do,” he all but growled before a shout from somewhere around him made him sigh, “I have to go now. Take care, Jongdae, of him as well as of you. There won’t be any good done if you become sick, too.”  
A small smile spread over Jongdae’s lips at the younger man’s words. “I will try. Again, thank you, Kyungsoo. Have a nice time.”  
The little devil-disguised angel hung up without saying goodbye. 

Deciding to just follow his advices, Jongdae placed the phone on the nightstand and then stood up in a flash, hurrying to the bathroom (more skidding than anything) to fulfill his duty, the promise he had made. The walls around him blurred when they flew by, reminding him that he still needed to eat something but he quickly pushed the thought aside – Minseok was more important than food. As soon as he reached his destination, Jongdae ripped open one of the drawers and took two small towels out, then he threw both of them in the sink and turned on the water on the coldest level before he went over to the washing machine where another small cabinet was seated in which Minseok kept his cleaning utensils. Taking out a light orange bucket, he hurried over to the lavatory again and placed the bucket under it, too. This would spare him many walks to the bathroom so that he could watch over his best friend better.   
Once it was filled halfway, he threw the towels inside and turned the faucet off, then he spun around on his heels and walked back to the bedroom as fast as he could with the bucket in his hands and since he was a bit clumsy he didn’t want to risk anything with running (the least he could use now were broken bones) - this was slower than he liked.   
The small man was a bit calmer than before, churning just a little bit when Jongdae skipped over to him and sat down on his previous spot, the water filled plastic resting next to his right leg as he made sure that the older guy really wasn’t shivering any more before he reached over to the nightstand and pulled it open. Purposely ignoring everything other than tissues that was found inside (although it painted the tips of his ears in a light shade of pink), Jongdae took out one of the white cloths to wipe the man’s forehead a bit, knowing that Minseok wouldn’t approve any sweat on his body if he had washed himself not even an hour ago. He gingerly tapped the handkerchief against the smaller man’s heated head, drying off the reddened skin over his brows and of his cheeks before he laid it on the nightstand, planning to throw it away later since he was a man on a mission that moment.

Leaning down, Jongdae pulled one towel out of the bucket, wringing it out a bit so that it was not dripping anymore and folded it two times before he carefully placed it on Minseok’s forehead. The man twitched when the coldness attacked his head but he finally relaxed after some moments, his body going slack with a low, unintentional sigh. If there wasn’t his slow and steady breathing, Jongdae would have thought that his friend wasn’t even alive after what he had been going through these passed, agonizing minutes.   
Finally feeling able to relax too, Jongdae’s shoulders dropped he took a deep breath and let his head fall back a bit, thanking Kyungsoo and all Gods in the heavens that perhaps the worst was already over. He knew that fever could last up to four days and that he still needed to take Minseok’s temperature to make sure that he actually was getting better, but for the moment he decided that this could wait.   
Taking advantage of the double bed, he carefully scrambled over the unmoving body to lay down next to his best friend on the free, unoccupied side that looked like nobody had slept in it ever since Minseok had moved into this apartment. With all that, his gaze still didn’t break away from the man, scanning his face for any traces or evidences of pain or slight discomfort. His eyes still moved under his closed lids, but it didn’t seem as panicked and hurried anymore – not like he was trying to find an escape but looking, searching for something.   
Jongdae let his hand slide over the mattress and under the duvet until he found Minseok’s. The skin was still too hot and sweaty but nothing the younger man wouldn’t be able to take when he entwined their fingers – only to feel whether he was shivering again or not of course, the other arm folded under his head as a makeshift pillow. All thoughts of Mihyun had suddenly left his mind the moment he felt his hand being squeezed a bit – so delicately it was almost unnoticeable but it was there. An involuntary smile made its way onto Jongdae’s lips. 

About an hour had passed when the younger man decided that he could put the other towel on his forehead after the first one had adapted to the heat of Minseok’s skin. He had waited for that long because he didn’t know whether he should be cold all the time or only sometimes and (not wanting to be the reason Minseok began to shiver so) he let a few minutes flow by without doing anything. He climbed over the older man again, pulled out the other towel and proceeded the same with it than with the one before. Yet this time, Minseok’s eyelids fluttered open when the water came in contact with his forehead. 

“Hey,” Jongdae whispered, brows hunched together in worry, “how are you feeling?”  
“Cold… and hot at the same time,” he answered. His voice was rough around the edges both from sleep the soreness of his throat. Minseok felt like he had when he tried out how cool it would be to smoke – one week had to pass by until he was able to stop coughing.   
“I called Kyungsoo for help but he’s at his parents' so he can’t over. But he told me how to take care of you properly,” Jongdae explained when the smaller man reached up to touch his forehead, his look changing into confusion when he felt the wet fabric of the towel under his fingertips.   
“Oh,” he let it sink again, unconsciously placing it on top of his best friend’s hand but the younger guy just smiled and turned his palm up so that he could entwine their fingers again.   
“W-was he still mad?” Minseok muttered, his eyes closing slowly again. Being sick was quite exhausting but he had to make sure that he hadn’t fucked things up too badly – not with Kyungsoo, he would never be able to deal with that. 

“The first thing he did when he answered the phone was to apologize,” Jongdae said calmly and let his thumb trail over the older man’s hand to sooth him a bit, “I don’t think so, you can talk to him when you are feeling better, okay?”  
Minseok nodded in response, almost on the verge of passing out again when his friend remembered something. He looked around until he found the bottle of water he had brought with him before the older guy had been out the first time, jumping up when he finally spotted it and startling the poor man by his side with the sudden action when his hand was falling onto the covers without Jongdae’s.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled when he sat back down, opening the lid before he held it out for Minseok to take. “I didn’t want to scare you, you just need to drink something even if you don’t feel like it.”  
After a short discussion, Minseok, of course, gave in to Jongdae’s prying words and gazes, accepting the bottle and taking a few sips, knowing that he had to do this to keep his body functioning (but it hurt…) before he handed it over again. Jongdae didn’t seem impressed by the amount he had drunk but it was alright for now. He could always force him to swallow more later. Until than he reclined next to the smaller man again in the same position he had been previously. Minseok was still drifting around somewhere between consciousness and sleep so he noticed the change in his body, muttering a slightly whined “Cold” before a small fit of shivers wrecked his frame.   
Jongdae reacted instantly, throwing the towel off his head and pulling the duvet around his best friend a bit tighter, he shuffled closer a bit to get a better look at him but even after some minutes had flown by, the shivering still didn’t stop. It somehow felt like he had done everything wrong when Minseok’s teeth began to chatter and the small guy let out a pitiful whine. 

“Oh fuck it,” Jongdae muttered and held up the side of the cover, skidding under it and pulling the man flush against his own body to get rid of the coldness somehow, not for a second thinking that he invaded his personal space or could make him feel uncomfortable because of how they were cuddling in the kitchen.   
Feeling the warmth radiating from his side, Minseok turned so that he was able to hide his face in his best friend’s chest, his arms tugged between their two frames and their legs tangled together under the blanket so absorb as much heat as possible.   
Jongdae nuzzled his nose into the black hair and closed his eyes, sighing when he asserted that Minseok calmed down a bit.   
“I’m sorry,” he muttered, “I don’t know what to do, I make everything worse.”  
“No, you don’t,” the man argued quietly with his forehead pressed against the younger male’s collarbone. He really hoped that this wasn’t just another dream, especially when there were arms encircling his waist and gentle fingers drawing small patterns on his back. Sighing in content, Minseok kneaded the fabric of Jongdae’s pullover with his hands where his palms were placed on his chest. 

Resting his chin on the smaller man’s head, Jongdae felt at peace even after the last hour, even though he knew how Mihyun would scold him the second he came home – even though he knew that he shouldn’t enjoy the position they were in as much as he did but he couldn’t bring himself to care. This was just for the sake of warming up Minseok, to make it easier on him, Jongdae told himself. This didn’t mean anything.   
Thinking of Mihyun, there was a restless feeling pooling his lower stomach that made him groan silently. She had never liked it when he was out without her, fearing that something could happen even though he had told her so many times that she didn’t need to worry, that he would never even think about cheating on her or forgetting about her, let alone do it in the end. With whom anyway? Every time he said that he wanted to go out alone, she had put up a fight – especially with Minseok the first time. Knowing about his slight social anxiety, Jongdae refused to bring Mihyun when they met up, saying that he wouldn’t willingly make it harder on the older man than it already was but she didn’t believe him. Perhaps she was scared that Minseok wasn’t even a guy but a girl he was seeing behind her back, perhaps she was just really, really clingy or perhaps she didn’t trust others and was against new people. 

It was just one of the things that drove Jongdae insane during their first months together – he had learned to deal with it by now but that doesn’t meant that he would follow her every will. Minseok was important to Jongdae, he made such a big difference to him, and he would never let Mihyun get in between them albeit that would mean a fight he had to put up with once he was home again. Relationships were all about making compromises and sacrifices for your partner because you loved them – sadly, Jongdae had to swallow way more than his fiancé because (most of the times) he gave in to avoid arguments for the sake of being a happy couple. 

Somewhere along the lines of calming his speeding heart and trying to convince himself that Jongdae only let him get close like this because he felt guilty about making him shiver, Minseok was pulled into delirium again. The waves were back, yet this time a lot lighter and shallower while he was floating on them with his head above the surface, facing the bright sky over him although his eyes were closed. There was no panic anymore, no demons which threatened to haunt him, nothing biting or clawing at his skin. Instead a peaceful silence laid over him and warmness covered his body like he was buried under a soft blanket with a hot water bottle placed on his chest that spread its heat from there over his whole frame, from the top of his head to his pinky. His bones still hurt whenever he was moved by the waves that carried him a bit closer to the shore with every motion but it was manageable now, nothing close to the delirium he was trapped in before.   
Jongdae stayed awake the whole time to make sure that he didn’t mess things up again, pulling back from time to time to examine the man’s face before he returned to their previous position. The duvet over them, Minseok’s fever, the pullover and long pants he had on made him feel hotter than he ever had been, a thin layer of sweat covering his body but it was for a good reason and if it was for Minseok, he would hold out until he was sure that he could leave him on his own again. Until then he would stay and cuddle him as much as he needed to make him feel better, to fight his cold with him if he was not able to fight it for his best friend on his own (which Jongdae absolutely would if it was possible to relieve Minseok of it). 

At some point of his deep slumber, Minseok kneading his chest changed to Minseok pushing the younger guy until he gave in and laid on his back, the smaller man half on top of him with Jongdae’s arms still wrapped around his waist tightly to keep him close as well as their legs still tangled together. The older man’s head was rested on his friend’s chest now, one arm draped over his body. Jongdae bit back a laugh at this position, remembering the time Mihyun had complained that this sometimes caused her pain when her boobs got in the way and that it hurt if she was in a wrong position. Perhaps it was easier for a guy, it certainly felt it little better than it had when his (back than still) girlfriend had done this since she had been shuffling around the whole time to find a comfortable way of smothering her boyfriend. Minseok was completely still except for the way his ribcage was raised and fell with every breath he took and let out.   
The man looked like the boy he was when they had met for the first time - his cheeks puffed a bit as if he still was a bit chubby, his hair falling into his forehead in order to hide his face, his lower lip pushed out as if he was pouting. 

“Cute,” Jongdae muttered and smiled as he watched over his older friend until a ring was heard from beside him, making him jump and throw his head to the side of the noise quickly. To his delight, Minseok’s phone was where he could still reach it on the nightstand so that he only had to stretched out one arm, the other still on his friend’s back, to answer the call, not looking who it was since he was too focused on getting rid of the noise before it could wake up the man draped over his body.   
“Hey Minseok,” an all too familiar, sweet voice was heard, “I’m sorry to call you but Jongdae doesn’t answer his phone so I thought that-“  
It felt like a déjà vu when he cut her off to whisper an answer back.   
“It’s me, Mi.”  
“You can read the clock, can’t you?” she nagged before even staring to ask why he was later than she thought he would be. “It’s almost midday, you said that you would be home in the morning. And why are you whispering again?”  
Suppressing a sigh, Jongdae casted his eyes down to keep track whether Minseok had already woken up or not. He was a little more at ease when he say that the man was still asleep.   
“Some problems came up and I… I can’t come home right now, I sincerely apologize and I can’t speak any louder because he’s asleep right now.”   
His voice was still kept in a low register, not too much so that his soon-to-be-wife could understand him but quiet enough to not disturb Minseok’s much needed nap. 

“Can I ask you a question?” Mihyun wanted to know, the undertone she was talking in made it clear that she wasn’t expecting any answer. “When did he become more important to you than me?”  
“Mihyun!” he hissed, “You know as well as I do that this is not the case but Minseok is not feeling well in more ways than one so please understand that I have to take care of him first before I can come home, okay?”  
There were some seconds of uncomfortable, almost endless silence since she finally answered again.   
“What about my surprise for you?”  
Sometimes life was freaking unfair.   
“I’m sorry but health is a little bit more important than your sexual needs, sweetheart.”  
“You know what?” she answered, so calm Jongdae knew right away that he had balled things up pretty badly. “Why don’t you just come home whenever you feel like it? I’m sure your lover won’t mind if you stay with him for longer than necessary.”  
“He’s not my-“ 

It was too late when he heard that the line went dead – she had ended the call after her last words. Huffing out a frustrated sigh, he almost threw the phone away until he remembered that it was not his when he noticed the cracks in the glass surface. Looking down at the sleeping boy on his chest, he hunched his eyebrows together one more time, asking himself what could happen that Minseok would shatter his phone screen since the older man was as careful as one could get with his things and always made sure that nothing fell to the ground – not even as an accident. But perhaps he was reading too much into the situation so he let it be without thinking about it too much, laying the phone back on the nightstand and then placing both of his hands on Minseok’s back again to continue with the circles he had drawn over it before.   
Mihyun wasn’t always like this. When it were the right times, she was the most caring, sweet and beautiful person in the world. It didn’t matter when, she always looked like she had been on vacation for three weeks – her skin as well as her eyes shining, her hair falling in straight strands over her shoulders down to the middle of her back, she had a slim figure but was not too skinny at that, her body was just right in every aspect. Paired with that she was clever, a smart person with knowledge about each and everything, she was good with children and knew how to behave when elder people were around.   
And then she was jealous, overly so most of the time. Jongdae had caught her looking through his phone more than just once, searching for messages or photos she shouldn’t have been supposed to see and even if she never found something suspicious, it didn’t keep her from investigating further. She sometimes didn’t believe him when he stayed at the university longer that normally because he had to learn in the library, she at first didn’t believe him that Minseok was a guy, she even called his parents one time when he said he would visit them and thought that he was lying. It was more than complicated especially since Jongdae had never given her a reason to worry at all. He had never even thought about it, wondering what he had done wrong to give her the impression he could be cheating on her behind her back. But that was the reason why she always insisted on doing everything together, of calling him twice a day whenever they were not together – to check on him. 

“You can go, you know?” a quiet, husky voice pulled him out of his thoughts and made Jongdae sigh again when he realized what that voice meant.   
“I woke you up,” he asserted and closed his eyes for a brief moment, cursing himself inside his head for not being able to grant his friend these much needed hours of sleeping.   
Minseok stretched a bit on his body, still not making a move to lay on his side or let go of his best friend. Jongdae didn’t mind anyway. If that was what helped him, he would gladly stay in this position until the next morning came.

“It’s alright,” he rasped and then cleared his throat to sound at least a bit better – it didn’t have the effect he wished for. “But I'm serious, go to her, I understand if she… needs you.”  
An almost pained whimper escaped Jongdae’s lips. “How much did you hear?”  
“Almost everything I guess? I think I woke up when you hissed her name,” he explained with his eyes still closed. The image of what they had been talking about then had almost made him cringe when a hot bolt had crashed through his heart while he had a picture in front of him of the both doing things… he didn’t ever want to witness in front of his own eyes if he didn’t want to become blind. 

The younger man let out a sigh and sunk his nose into the mop of black hair under his chin again, breathing in the familiar scent he had come to know over the years. There was a hint of vanilla from his bath lingering back.   
“I’m sorry, you probably didn’t want to hear any of this.”  
“That’s right,” he confirmed and turned his face a bit to hide better in the pullover he was cuddled into. It was not only that the fabric was incredibly soft but it smelled so much like Jongdae, it nearly drove the older boy insane. He didn’t know how Mihyun was able to bear this all of the time. “But I understand if you want to leave, I would do the same if I was you.” If I was the one waiting for you, that means. 

“No, you wouldn’t,” Jongdae chuckled quietly, the rumble in his chest made Minseok’s heart beat slightly faster than usual. There were those damned butterflies again. It was almost a small miracle Jongdae hadn’t noticed it already.   
“You are too kind, you would stay around until I would throw you out of the apartment and even then you would stay until you were sure that I was really alright.”

“But I am!” he argued and lifted his head to look at the younger man properly, flinching back once he did so when he realized how close they were. Jongdae’s lips were only a few inches from his face, looking inviting enough to-  
“No, you are not.” Oh, so that perfect mouth was able to speak. Minseok let his gaze wonder over that beautiful face until he reached the reached the man’s eyes, the chocolate colored orbs meeting his slightly darker ones. He looked serious, worried but not uncomfortable at the closeness.   
“And that doesn’t matter anyway, I won’t leave you just because she wants something I don’t even want.”

There was another sting delivered through his heart but he ignored it as good as possible since he didn’t even know why it was there.   
“Aren’t men usually the ones who want sex all of the time?”  
Jongdae let his head fall back with annoyed groan, expanse of his neck and the underside of his chin was all Minseok was able to make out from his position.   
“Maybe they are but please, let’s not talk about that now. That’s a topic we can discuss when he have already emptied a bottle of wine or something.”  
The older man nodded a bit and laid his head down again, tangling their legs together further in order to feel a little more connected to the younger guy than he already was. 

“Do you mind?” Minseok whispered and fixed his gaze on point of the wall next to the bed. “I mean it, you can go, I won’t be mad at you. Or I can lay down on this side of the bed.”  
“Don’t even start like this,” Jongdae argued and rubbed both hands over his back softly in a reassuring manner that he really did mean his words, “I don’t mind this at all.”

Minseok closed his eyes even though he knew that he wouldn’t sleep again. There were too many thoughts, too many feelings to just let him drift off. There was Jongdae’s heartbeat, his chest rising and falling steadily in the same beat as his own. There was their closeness and the way the younger man held him so close, Minseok could almost get the impression that he didn’t want to let him go soon again. There were their bodies tangled together like it wasn’t sure which limb belonged to whom. There was Jongdae’s scent invading his senses, making him dizzy but in a good way – the kind of dizziness you feel when you have drunk just a glass of wine and nothing more, when you are not actually tipsy yet but just a little warmer inside, the kind of dizziness that spreads from the pit of your stomach and tickles your heart, that coaxes it to continue to beat.   
He let his own finger’s slide over the material of Jongdae’s pullover and buried the tips of his fingers in it a bit the deeper he fell into his thoughts, the more his mind began to swirl until he wasn’t even aware where he was and who he was with anymore. Jongdae would marry Mihyun in upcoming spring, five months at most. Five months were January until May - that meant 151 days maximum. 151 days he had to get over his feelings, to adapt to the idea of being his best man and standing next to him at the altar to watch him getting married to someone that wasn’t him. It would take a whole lot of his willpower to not crumble, to not break down next to them. Perhaps he could just leave the following celebration early. Perhaps he could find a date and tell Jongdae that she wanted to go to a hotel room or anything so that it wouldn’t be suspicious. Perhaps he should just move away and not show up for the wedding at all – it would certainly make things easier but if he did, Jongdae would be disappointed. Would he, though?

“Minseok,” a whisper brought him back into reality, “Are you crying?”  
The older boy reached up and brought his fingertips to his eyes, the wetness greeting him wasn’t what he expected.   
“Sorry,” he mumbled, “I didn’t notice, I’m not sad or anything.”  
A sigh left Jongdae’s throat and the movement of his hand sliding over Minseok’s back stopped abruptly.   
“Not wanting to tell me is one thing,” he began slowly, his voice calm but it was only for show and the older man knew this. It reminded him of yesterday evening when Jongdae had made a move to leave him when he was breaking. “But lying to me is an entirely other.”

“I’m not lying,” he argued and unintentionally tightened his hold on Jongdae’s pullover a bit more. Minseok still didn’t open his eyes, fearing that the situation could repeat itself once he did so – that the younger man would push him off and go, not because he was uncomfortable but because he felt betrayed.   
“I’m not sad, I’m just… thinking too much.”  
After some seconds of silence and an increased heartbeat, there were fingertips dancing over his back again. The older man let out a breath he wasn’t even aware of holding as he thanked the gods that he believed him, that he didn’t flee. 

“Talk to me,” Jongdae pleaded in a quiet register, the usual whiny tone he would have used had faded into something different, something that showed Minseok that he was desperate to help his friend in a situation like this.   
The smaller guy shook his head and almost hid his whole face in the chest under him, nuzzling against the fabric that made his words almost inapprehensible.   
“You don’t want to know.”


End file.
